Recovery
by drwells123
Summary: The Lazarus project is interrupted, leaving Miranda Lawson to nurse Kate Shepard back to health on a distant world. AU. H/c  hurt courtesy of Bioware . Pure fluff. Mature content. Reviews much appreciated. Thank you for reading!
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: This is not a sequel to my other fic, Duet.

* * *

Tap.

"...some movement, Miranda. Fifth digit of the left hand."

"Any others?"

"No. I'm seeing afferent activity, but no efferent."

"There's a pattern."

"What?"

"To her tapping."

"There's no way she - "

"Shepard. Can you hear me?"

Tap.

"It's all right, Shepard. You're safe."

Tap, tap.

"Can we get you anything?"

Tap.

"Miranda, we're in the middle of - "

"Shut up, Wilson. Shepard, can you spell it out? One tap for A to M, two for N to Z."

Tap.

"All right. One for A to F, two for G to M."

Tap.

"A?"

Tap, tap.

"B?"

Tap, tap.

"C?"

Tap.

"Are you cold?"

Tap.

"Get her another blanket."

* * *

"You really think Wilson's capable of something like that?"

"Anyone is, under the right circumstances. Maybe the Broker or the Collectors got to him somehow. Maybe he was a deep-cover agent to begin with. Maybe he just decided we're not paying him enough."

"You saw his dossier. No family, no close friends. No expensive habits. Psych profile was clean. And his civilian career was focused on research, not money. He was more interested in Lazarus than Cerberus in general, but that's fine for what we've got him doing."

"What he's doing is probing the security systems without authorization. And he's too good at it to just be curious. We'd never even have caught it if we hadn't added the hidden cache for the audit logs."

"If you hadn't, you mean. Sounds like your mind is made up."

"I know security is your job, Jacob. But we can't afford to take the risk. We're too close. Besides, we don't need him. I can finish the work myself."

"All right. I'll take care of it right away."

"Good. Then start the preparations for evacuation. This facility is compromised. I want us out of here by 2200."

* * *

Shepard awoke with a raging thirst and a terrible headache. She'd been dreaming, miserably, about wandering the endless, empty passageways of the Normandy, trying in vain to find any of her crew, or some medi-gel, or a glass of water.

Miranda watched her sleeping patient twitch and grimace, but made no move to wake her. She had gradually phased out the sedatives, but Shepard had to come up on her own. Miranda's eyes flicked to the readouts. They faced away from Shepard's bed and were out of reach. Miranda had also taken care to remove or cover any reflective surfaces in the room. Because Shepard looked awful.

Better than she had when they first found her, of course. Miranda was no stranger to gore, but she still had nightmares about that. Now, at least, Shepard had eyes again. They hadn't seeded her hair yet. Her face was crisscrossed with scars that were even more angry in contrast to her ghostly pale skin.

At last the blue eyes struggled open for the first time in nearly eighteen months. They stared, blank and unfocused, for several moments, before registering Miranda. Then they just watched her, dully.

"Shepard," Miranda said. "Can you hear me?"

The eyelashes flickered and the pupils dilated.

"Yes, I'm real. You're awake. You're safe."

The cracked lips moved, as if trying to remember how to form words.

"You can't talk with the tracheal tube in, Shepard. I can read your lips, though."

It wasn't easy. There was only a slight pursing of the lips. But Miranda understood at once. Crew. Of course, that was the first thing Shepard would ask.

"Yes, your crew is safe." Mostly. No need to go into that yet.

Shepard's lower lip moved, then her tongue flicked the roof of her mouth. W and T. Water.

Miranda shook her head. "You can't eat or drink until we get that tube out. You're getting nutrition through your IV."

Shepard's lips pursed again, then the T again, then a hiss. Hurts.

"We're giving you as many painkillers as we safely can. The pain will recede in time. You're getting better."

They eyes were drifting closed again.

"Everything is going to be all right, Shepard." Another partial truth. "Take it easy."

Shepard sank back into the hell of pain and confusion and thirst. But at least there were people there now. Ashley, and Kaidan, and the strange woman with dark hair and blue eyes all drifted in and out. But the woman seemed more real than the others. Shepard asked her for water, again and again, to no avail. Once the woman did give her a glass, but it was empty. Another time, it contained water, and Shepard thrust it to her lips and greedily drank and drank, but the water dissolved into mist in her mouth.

* * *

"Shepard?"

Shepard struggled up out of the fog again. She seemed to come farther out of it this time. The woman was there again.

"Shepard, I want to get that tube out of you, so you can have some water. But I need you to breathe first."

Shepard's fists tightened, twisting the sheets under her. Why was this so hard? All she wanted was water.

"It's all right. Try to breathe in rhythm with the machine at first."

Shepard would get out of the bed and get her own water, then. Her hands tried to reach for the tube, to pull it out, but her wrists were fastened to the bed frame. Her heart began pounding. A red haze ringed her vision. The monitors next to her thumped and beeped frantically.

"You're all right, Shepard. Don't panic. Just breathe."

She wasn't all right. Her spacesuit had ruptured, and she was falling. The air was rushing out, and the planet reached up to roast her alive in its atmosphere or smash her against the hard ground miles below. The bed rattled as she tried to reach for her helmet seals. She fought for air.

The black mists receded. Her descent seemed to slow, then stop, as she realized she was in someone's arms. The woman had slipped one arm under her shoulders, and the other was across her waist, holding her hand. "You're all right," she was saying, again and again. "I've got you. You're breathing. You're all right." As she looked up into those blue eyes, she realized the monitors had fallen silent.

* * *

Miranda waited until Shepard was asleep again. She marched past a surprised Taylor as she went downstairs, all the way to the wine cellar, and shut the door behind her. Her omni-tool was linked to Shepard's monitors and would warn her if anything happened. She could be back upstairs in twenty seconds. The wine cellar was better for pacing, and cursing.

Twenty minutes later, Taylor walked in.

"You've still got the timing just right," she said.

Her anger rolled off him. He leaned against the door, hands in his pockets. "What happened?"

"She had some kind of - flashback while I was trying to get her to breathe. The Normandy, probably."

"Hard to see how you could avoid that. She had to start breathing on her own again."

"I should have seen this coming. Warned her beforehand. Given her more sedatives."

"She's barely awake as it is. And something like this, we're all learning as we go. You're doing the best you can."

"It wasn't good enough." Miranda's voice was a wall of fury. "She has to be exactly as she was. Exactly. And the first thing I do is traumatize her. I could have compromised the entire - "

She stopped as he stepped over and took her by the shoulders. His voice was gentle. "Miranda. For the past two years, she's just been a project. But now she's a human being. She has hopes, and fears, and needs. Those are what you need to look at now. Not just the checklists and test results."

"I do. I sit with her all the time. When she's awake, I talk to her. Encourage her." Miranda wondered why she felt so defensive.

"Try talking to her when she's not awake. Read something to her, maybe."

"Nonsense. She can't hear - "

"It's not just for her."

"I screwed up. Singing lullabyes to her isn't going to change that, or make me feel better about it. I just have to do better. Learn more." She sighed. "All right, I'll try."

* * *

"'Natural science,'" Miranda read, "'does not render the future predictable. It makes it possible to foretell the results to be obtained by definite actions. But it leaves unpredictable two spheres: that of insufficiently known natural phenomena and that of human acts of choice. Our ignorance with regard to these two spheres taints all human actions with uncertainty.'"

Miranda felt more than a little silly. And, after a while, resentful. No one did this for her when she was younger. (As she saw it, she'd never been a child.) Her education had been shoved down her throat. Hours and hours of maths, physics, biology, economics. And she sure as hell didn't get to read for recreation. Things like literature and philosophy were only included so she would seem well-rounded.

She had plastered Shepard with as many sedatives, painkillers, and muscle relaxants as she safely could, and removed the breathing tube while she slept. Shepard coughed a few times as Miranda watched anxiously, then her head turned and rested against the pillow, her chest still rising and falling evenly. A ray of sunlight fell across her face. A little color had returned to the sharp cheekbones since the first time she'd woken up, and the scars were a little less angry. Miranda stood and closed the curtains more tightly, darkening the room.

She'd been reading for an hour already. No need to do any more. She had reports to write, and...

She sighed and sat back in her chair beside Shepard's bed. She called Jacob and told him to bring her a drink. This was his idea, after all, so he could keep her comfortable while she did it.

Jacob came in with a bottle of wine and a glass.

Miranda looked up. "Not going to join me?"

He smiled. "Thanks, but not on duty." They'd been adding to the staff slowly and painstakingly, and were still shorthanded. Jacob and Miranda were the only ones who knew Shepard was here.

He glanced at the heavy book on her lap. One of the many amenities here was a library with real books. He read, "'Apodictic certainty is only within the orbit of the deductive system of aprioristic theory. The most that can be attained with regard to reality is probability.' Just a little light reading, huh?"

She looked at him, puzzled. "But it is light. One of the masterpieces of epistemology, but very basic."

"Well, have fun. I've gotta get back to it." He saluted and left.

Miranda glanced at Shepard, who was still deep in sleep. "You're safe with him here," she said. Talking out loud was becoming a habit. Shepard didn't even twitch. Her chest rose and fell slowly, evenly. They'd finally seeded her hair. It was still short and wiry, dark red against the white pillow. Her closed eyes were shaped like almonds. Her nose was thin and her mouth was flat, serious, yet with just enough of a pout to be sensual.

Beautiful, Miranda thought, despite the livid scarring. She was, of course, just admiring her handiwork. She sighed. She put down her book and picked up another one, one Shepard was said to like. Fluff, in her opinion.

"'Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves...'"


	2. Chapter 2

Miranda slept in a chair in Shepard's room. If she hadn't been a light sleeper to begin with, Cerberus would have made her one. But now she was attuned to the slightest change in Shepard's breathing, or in the soft, steady hum of the machines, or in the faint, even footsteps of the sentries below.

She heard a deep, rasping, shuddering sigh, and her eyes opened to find Shepard looking at her.

"Shepard." Miranda stood up stiffly and walked over to the bed. Those almond-shaped blue eyes followed her.

Shepard's voice sounded a thousand years old. "Wa - " she coughed. "Water?"

Miranda had the bottle ready on the bedside table. She touched the bed controls and Shepard was slowly raised to a sitting position. Shepard started to reach for the bottle, but Miranda gently pushed her hand back down. "Save your strength." She held the bottle to Shepard's lips and tilted it, giving her one small swallow at a time, so she wouldn't choke. Shepard tried to open her mouth, to take in more, but winced as she stretched the skin around her jaw. Some of the water trickled down her chin and beaded on her white gown.

Shepard drank the entire bottle. "More?" Her voice sounded much better.

Miranda had already called Jacob to bring another. She said, "How are you feeling?"

"I...where am I?"

"You're safe. You're with friends."

"Where are my crew? Are they all right?" Shepard's eyes seemed more focused now.

"They're all right." Miranda wasn't surprised Shepard didn't remember asking before.

"Can I see them?"

"Not right now. You need rest."

"I'll rest easier if I see them."

Miranda was pleased. Shepard's mind was working. All those tense, tedious hours of synaptic reconstruction had paid off. Then she remembered Jacob's advice. The woman had woken up in a strange place, with strange people, and she was worried. She took Shepard's hand and squeezed slightly. "I promise they're all right," she said.

Shepard took a deep breath. "I've seen you before." Her eyes clouded. "I...I was..."

Miranda squeezed again. "It's all right. Don't worry about that right now."

The door opened and Jacob walked in. Miranda was glad of the distraction. His eyes widened as he saw Shepard. Miranda hid a smile as he started to salute, then aborted the motion and just nodded instead. He understood this was perhaps the most delicate part of the entire project.

Miranda wished she were doing a better job of it. Surgery? That part was easy.

She held the fresh bottle up for Shepard, who drank about half of it. She set it on the bedside table. "If you're too tired to reach for it, just wake me. I'll be here." Shepard's wrists were no longer fastened to the bed. Miranda hoped she'd forgotten that too. She lowered Shepard's bed back to about forty-five degrees - she was still worried about some fluid in Shepard's lungs.

Shepard's eyes were already drifting closed again. Her lips moved. Miranda had to lean close to hear. "Who..."

"Miranda. Miranda Lawson."

Shepard's breathing was deep. Miranda thought she'd already gone back to sleep, but then her lips moved once more.

"Miranda."

* * *

She was trapped under dark water, with dead branches and leaves floating slowly above her, and something pinning her to the muddy bottom of the pond. The woman was standing on the shore, looking down at her through the ripples made by her terrified thrashing. She kept trying to scream the woman's name, even as the immovable weight of the water pressed down on her, seeping into her lungs, but all she could get out was "M...m..."

"Shepard." She was being shaken. "It's all right, Shepard. It's Miranda. I'm here. You're all right."

Her frantic breathing slowed and the terrified hammering of her heart receded. She was back in the room. It was warm and yellow. No, the walls were yellow, split by ornately carved beams of dark wood. The floor and ceilings were of the same wood. There was a lamp that filled the room with warm light. She realized Miranda had just switched it on. It must be the middle of the night.

She found herself resting her head on Miranda's shoulder. She wasn't sure how it happened. She was still shaking. It all surprised her. She didn't have many nightmares any more. She was used to fear. And she had never come close to drowning. So why would she dream about it?

"It's all right." Miranda's voice was quiet. Her hair was lush and black, and smelled faintly of pine needles. It fit with the room. But Shepard thought she had seen her in a different room before. Cold and metallic.

Shepard tried to think it through, but soon her thoughts became disjointed and nonsensical. Miranda had temporarily increased the sedative in her IV drip again, but she didn't know that. She did know her head was still on Miranda's shoulder as she fell asleep again. This time, there were no nightmares.

* * *

"Shepard."

Shepard stabbed blindly at the bed controls until she felt herself being lifted to a sitting position. "You can call me Kate, if you'll let me have some ice cream."

"Kate." It sounded strange to Miranda. The person in front of her had been Shepard, or even "it", for more than a year and a half. "You can soon, but it won't stay down yet."

Shepard groaned.

"We took your catheter out earlier. You can have a bedpan if you prefer, but you should be able to walk to the bathroom if I help you. I've turned the gravity down."

Shepard frowned for a moment, then her eyes widened and her face heated. It was also strange to see her blush. She was so pale, even when she was alive. Miranda guessed at once what was wrong. "It's okay. Not unexpected." She stood. "It's time for another bath anyway. We'll get you fresh sheets and everything. Hold on, I'll go run some water."

She started toward the bathroom. She didn't know what made her stop and turn around. Shepard had put her face in her hands. She was trembling. She's mortified, Miranda thought. Then: wouldn't you be?

"Shep - Kate." She put a hand on Shepard's shoulder. "You were asleep. You didn't know I took it out. When you have it in, you just don't think about it. It's all right. Really. Nothing I haven't seen before." That was true. She had practiced.

Shepard lowered her hands. There were tears in her eyes. "Miranda. Why am I here? And why is my face cut up? I can feel it. What happened to me? To my crew? To the Normandy?"

Miranda didn't want to go there yet, but Shepard wasn't going to be put off any more. She brought her chair over and sat beside the bed. "Your ship was destroyed. Most of your crew survived. Williams, Moreau, Chakwas, T'Soni, nar Rayya, they're all fine. You were hurt."

"How? Where am I? How long have I been here?"

Miranda had resolved not tell Shepard about the Lazarus project, not yet. And she refused to lie - it might help now, but it would be irreparable later. But Shepard had the thread and she was going to keep pulling.

"You're in a safe house. You've been here about a month." That was true. Lying by omission is still lying, Miranda. She went on, "You've been out for about eighteen months."

"Jesus." Shepard closed her eyes and sank back. Her reddish hair was getting longer. It made a halo against the white of the pillow.

"You're going to be all right," Miranda said.

Eyes still closed, Shepard said, "I keep...seeing something. Dreaming it, maybe. I'm falling..."

"Kate," Miranda said. Shepard's eyes opened. "Please, don't try to remember. We'll get to it, I promise." She stood up, to end the discussion.

She came back five minutes later with a tub of hot, soapy water and set it on a cart beside the bed. "I'm going to take this sheet off, and then your gown, all right?"

Shepard pushed the sheet down. "It's okay. I was a marine. I'm not shy. And you've seen me, I'm sure."

You have no idea, thought Miranda.

Shepard reached behind her neck and snapped the ties. The front of her gown fell down over her breasts. Then she reached behind her waist and snapped the ties there as well. Miranda found that she envied Shepard's lack of self-consciousness. Shepard squirmed out of the dampened gown, then winced either in pain or shock. Like her face, her naked white body was crisscrossed with angry scars.

"It's all right." That had become Miranda's litany. "They'll heal. Just sit back and relax." She stuffed the gown and sheet into a plastic bag, then pulled out the sheet beneath Shepard as well, leaving only the impermeable mattress cover.

Shepard hugged herself. She was shivering a little.

"This'll help." Miranda soaked the sponge in the soapy water, squeezed it, and began scrubbing Shepard's back.

"Ahh..." The water was very hot. A few trickles ran down Shepard's back and she sat up, arching her back, an involuntary smile revealing her even white teeth. Her shivering stopped. She let out a deep sigh of pleasure as Miranda soaped her neck, then her shoulders and arms and chest and stomach. She hated being so obvious, but it felt so good, and she'd been in various states of pain and discomfort for so long. She even said, "You can do this all day if you want." She was half-hoping Miranda would take her up on it.

Miranda assumed Shepard was just covering her embarrassment. She's used to doing things for herself, Miranda thought. She smiled and said, "Well, enjoy it while it lasts." The sponge made a spiral down Shepard's legs, to her feet.

She rubbed soap into Shepard's face and hair last. Shepard sat there, covered in suds, as Miranda went back to the bathroom and returned with a tub of clean water. Shepard kept her eyes closed as Miranda rinsed her. Then she was enveloped in a warm, fluffy white towel. Miranda patted her down lightly, careful not to pull her skin.

When she was dry, Miranda wrapped her in the towel. "Almost done. I just need to move you to this chair while I put new sheets on." Shepard rotated and put her bare feet on the floor. Miranda stood facing her, holding her hands as she stood up. Her knees almost buckled, but she caught herself. Her face was white. "It's okay," Miranda said. She helped Shepard take a shaking step, turning her body so she could sit down in Miranda's chair. Shepard slumped, panting. She was not looking forward to standing up again.

Miranda keyed her omni-tool and swept her arm over the bed. A broad, flat red beam of light washed across the mattress cover, silently disinfecting it. She went to a cupboard and took out a set of crisp white sheets. She quickly put on the fitted sheet, then the flat sheet. She turned to Shepard, hands out to help her up. "Ready?"

Shepard's wide blue eyes looked up at her, her face drawn and miserable. "I...I'm gonna..."

Miranda grabbed the tub of rinse water and held it out for her, slopping some onto the floor. She was just in time. Shepard threw up.

There wasn't much. When she was done, Miranda took the bottle of water, gently tilted Shepard's head back, and lifted it to her lips so she could rinse her mouth out. She did, twice, spitting it into the tub, and then drank.

Miranda sat the tub down. "Better?"

Shepard nodded, her eyes closed.

Miranda put a hand on her shoulder. "It's an aftereffect from the anesthesia." She knelt and slid an arm under Shepard's knees. "Here, lean forward a bit." She put her other arm behind Shepard's back and lifted her into the bed, thankful for the lowered gravity. Then she pulled the sheet up over her. "You had a busier day than I planned. Is there anything you need?"

Shepard was curled up tightly. "I'm cold," she murmured.

That happens after vomiting, Miranda thought. She got a thick blanket from the cupboard and put it over Shepard. "How's that?"

Shepard nodded once. Then she was out.

Miranda sat down. She was tired too. She thought, you don't see the magic in the most basic bodily functions until you've done the plumbing yourself. She laughed a little, but Shepard slept on, oblivious. After a minute, so was Miranda.

* * *

Miranda was awakened by a slight creak of a floorboard. There was some moonlight streaming through the window. It showed a dark blue and white outline of Shepard, her blanket wrapped around her, leaning heavily on a table with one hand and clutching her IV tree with the other, about halfway across the room.

"Kate..." The figure started. "It's me." She stood up, stretched, and walked over to take Shepard's arm. Shepard didn't argue as Miranda helped her the rest of the way to the bathroom.

She eased Shepard down onto the seat, and waited. She should have stood outside but she was too sleep-fogged to think of it. Anyway, Shepard learned to the side and rested her head against Miranda's stomach as she went.

She went for long enough that Miranda noticed it. "You must have been miserable. How long did it take you to get that far? You should have woken me."

"I had to try..."

You have to learn to ask for help until you get better, Miranda almost said. No, Shepard was right. She did have to try.

In the dark, she just saw the smile that tugged at Shepard's mouth. "You can help me get back, though."


	3. Chapter 3

Miranda pulled open the curtains, flooding the room with sunlight. The window was, of course, reinforced with kinetic barriers. Shepard groaned as the light fell across her face. It turned her hair flaming red. Her skin looked more fair than pale, and her scars were fading.

"Care for breakfast? If you can keep food down, we can take that IV out."

"If you take the IV out, can I walk around outside?" That was what interested Kate the most.

Miranda considered. "No, but I could get an antigrav chair and push you." Fresh air would be good for her.

"I'd appreciate that." Those almond-shaped blue eyes watched her. "I never thanked you. You've been very kind to me."

To her own surprise, Miranda smiled. "All part of the job."

"How come you're my only nurse?"

"This is a small facility. And a secure one."

"Secure, yes." Shepard paused. "I guess that explains why you're not really a nurse."

Miranda let her eyebrows knit slightly. "What makes you say that?"

"The way you made my bed last week. I could tell you weren't used to it."

Miranda's sigh was half pleasure, again because Shepard's mind was working, and half exasperation, as from dealing with a precocious child. "I'll tell you what. I'll get us some breakfast, and we can play twenty questions while you eat. Fair?"

Shepard's mouth quirked. "I guess that's the best deal I'm going to get." For now, she was plainly thinking.

"What'll you have? Our chef can make most anything."

"Pancakes," Shepard said. "Big, fluffy buttermilk ones." She felt silly, but she hadn't eaten in days - no, months, she reminded herself. "Fried potatoes. Scrambled eggs. A sliced peach. Coffee and orange juice."

"Not a problem," Miranda said. They had all those things, stasis-shipped from Earth. "I'll be back." She could have relayed the order, of course, but she wanted to get up and move around.

She closed the old-fashioned wooden door behind her - where another kinetic barrier kept it in place - and walked down three flights of stairs. She'd always thought the layout of the place was bizarre - the kitchen was just off the main stairway on the ground floor, but the dining room was another floor down, in the basement.

She turned into the kitchen. The chef was there, chopping vegetables with great whacks of his huge knife. "Miranda!" he said as he beheaded a carrot. "How are you this lovely morning?"

She smiled. A little of his gregarious manner went a long way for her, but she admired the enthusiasm he brought to his job. "How are you, Gardner?"

"I'm living the dream. What can I get you?"

She gave him Shepard's order, and her own, which was more modest. He winked. "Eating for two now, are we?"

Her smile faded at once. Well, eventually they were all going to find out. And they had all been checked with grim thoroughness. There would not be another Wilson. She just said, "Something like that."

She went and sat at a small table by the windows while he made the food. Of course, she didn't waste the time; she took out her datapad and began writing her next report.

Jacob walked in and sat down across from her, nursing a steaming cup of coffee, but didn't interrupt.

After she finished the report, she glanced up and saw that he was smiling slightly. "What?" she asked.

"It's just interesting. No offense, but you've never been the caregiver type. But you don't seem put out by it at all."

She shrugged. "You have to clean that gun every day. You don't get put out about that."

"Is that how you think of it?"

"That's how it is." She saw that the food was ready, and she stood to go.

That's how it has to be, she thought as she climbed the stairs with the large tray of food.

* * *

She opened the door and started setting plates of food on Shepard's bed. Shepard smiled at her. "I'm not used to being waited on. Even as a Spectre."

First Jacob, now Shepard. "This isn't a resort."

"I know. I'm just trying to say I appreciate it."

"You're welcome," Miranda said automatically. She wasn't used to being thanked. The boss acknowledged her in his own way, by making her his unofficial right hand, but he wasn't effusive.

"Take your time," she said as Shepard attacked her food. "Your stomach has shrunk, so I doubt you'll get as far as you think." She started eating her own breakfast - dry wheat toast, a sliced grapefruit, and coffee.

Shepard ate ravenously. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the quiet clinking of silver on china. Eventually she said, "What happened to my ship?"

"It was attacked by an alien ship of unknown origin."

"No one knows?"

"We suspect it was someone working with the Reapers."

Shepard looked down at her breakfast. She'd made a good dent in it. "That makes sense. You said my crew survived."

"Mr. Pressly was the highest-ranking casualty. The others were mostly from the lower decks."

Shepard closed her eyes. For a moment, she looked like the invalid she was. "I'd like to see their names."

"Of course. I'll get you the list."

"If it's been a year and a half...what happened to the rest of them? The survivors."

"Williams, Chakwas, and Moreau are all still with the Alliance. The turian went back to C-Sec for a while, but then he just disappeared. I'm afraid we don't know what happened to him. The quarian went back to the Migrant Fleet. The krogan became a clan leader on Tu'chanka. And Dr. T'Soni is an information broker on Ilium."

The last two revelations were the most jarring. She wasn't worried about Garrus. He could take care of himself. But Wrex, a politician? And... "How come you mentioned Liara by name? Did you, ah, recruit her too?"

Miranda had promised to keep Liara's role in recovering Shepard's body a secret. She said, "Somewhat. She got into a disagreement with the Shadow Broker - it seems he murdered an associate of hers - and she's declared a private war on him. It's a mismatch, if you ask me, even for someone with her skills and resources, but we help her out where we can. Quietly, of course."

Shepard was silent for a minute, trying to make sense of all of it. She said, "Can I have a news feed?"

Miranda smiled. "We don't even have them here. This is a retreat." And she couldn't care less what the fools running the galaxy were doing. The boss would tell her if anything important happened.

"What is it you're afraid of me finding out?"

Miranda glanced down. Shepard had eaten almost all her breakfast. She was impressed. She decided Shepard was strong enough. "I said you were hurt. Actually, your injuries were fatal."

That brought a silence. "And you...fixed me? Am I a clone or something?"

"No, you're you. My job was - and is - to keep you as intact as possible."

"As possible?"

"We had to replace a few things. We'll get to those when we start your therapy."

Shepard was silent for another moment. "The Alliance didn't do this, did they?"

"No." Miranda took a breath. "Cerberus did."

"Cerberus."

Miranda nodded.

Shepard really seemed at a loss now. But she plowed ahead. "Cerberus, the pro-human terrorist group. The one that murdered an Alliance admiral, turned people into husks, and - " she broke off, looking as though she had suddenly forgotten what she meant to say next. Those blue eyes looked down, making rapid, tiny movements.

Miranda knew what meant. Shepard was trying to remember. She just waited. Finally, Shepard blinked and shook her head minutely. Her eyes came back to Miranda. "You know how many Cerberus operatives I've killed? You must."

Miranda remembered to breathe again. Her mouth quirked. "You're direct, I'll give you that."

"So I'm a prisoner here?"

"You have to recover somewhere, Kate."

"How about an Alliance medical facility?"

"How about here?"

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Where is here, exactly?"

"2102 XHd."

Shepard shook her head minutely.

"It's in the Kirch Nebula."

"You're kidding." The Kirch Nebula was well outside the mass relay network, which was why no one had bothered naming this planet yet.

"Like I said, it's a safe house. To keep any agents of the Reapers from getting to you."

"And to keep me from escaping. Or the Alliance from stumbling over me."

"The Alliance declared you dead."

"You would say so."

Miranda forced herself to relax. "I'm not lying to you, Kate. About any of it. I promise. If we had any ill intentions toward you, you wouldn't be here."

Shepard's eyes flicked away. "This must have cost a fortune, more than you'd get in ransom. And I don't have enough classified knowledge to justify it, either. And there are plenty of other people for your sick experiments."

"Some of those sick experiments are why we were able to bring you back. Anyway, you don't have to guess. We want the Reapers stopped. Same as you." She wasn't going to talk about the attacks on the human colonies yet. That might make Shepard push herself too hard.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, is that it?"

"That's it. The Reapers are a greater threat to Cerberus than you'll ever be."

Shepard let out a breath. "You said I could have a look around?" She seemed resigned. Miranda wasn't fooled. Everything Shepard saw would be weighed as part of her escape plan. That was fine. She could barely walk. Their eyes met. Each of them knew what the other was thinking.

Miranda stood. "I'll get the chair. Let's give your food a few hours to stay down and then I'll take out the IV."

* * *

Shepard was able to get out of bed, stand up, and sit in the chair, though it left her breathing heavily. Miranda had disabled the chair's controls, so Shepard wouldn't go joyriding in it. The antigrav still worked, of course, keeping the chair suspended above the floor, but Miranda was left to push it. Shepard felt strangely aware of Miranda's hands on the back of her chair. They were close to her shoulders.

Miranda pushed the chair out of Shepard's room and into the stairwell. It was square, with a large shaft that let a person lean over the railing and look at the tiers below, or above. Shepard craned her neck. "What's up there?"

"More living quarters. You're on the third floor. Mine are on the fourth." Miranda pushed the chair onto the stairs. It descended smoothly, evening out the changes in height.

"Since you sleep in my room, you should rent yours out," Shepard said.

"I'll move back up there as soon as you're sleeping better," Miranda said.

Shepard just nodded. Miranda had the strange feeling she was disappointed. She brushed it aside.

On the first floor landing, a man and a woman with sniper rifles stood watching the lobby below. They looked at Miranda just long enough to make sure she belonged there. Even the sight of Shepard distracted them only for an instant. In front of them, the solid wood railing had been reinforced with a sheet of armor plating.

In the lobby stood four more guards, faces hidden behind the helmets of their battle armor. They were spaced widely, so a single explosive couldn't blind or kill them all. Each had a Mattock heavy rifle at the ready position, with a Carnifex heavy pistol in a belt holster.

They nodded to Miranda. If they noticed Shepard, they gave no sign of it. Shepard decided that ordering them to let her go would get her nowhere.

"I'd hate to have to assault this place," she said instead.

"That's the idea," Miranda said. "Eventually, you'll be able to defend yourself again."

Shepard wanted her captors to underestimate her. It wasn't much, but she had to do every tiny thing she could. She sighed. "At the rate I'm going, it'll be very eventual."

"If this were an extranet game, you'd be out of your bed and shooting geth ten minutes after we finished your surgery. But it isn't. You're going to need months of physical therapy and retraining."

"Is that your job too?"

"That's right. I'm the best there is." Miranda wondered why she needed to add that. She stabbed at the door control. The door was wooden and swung on a hinge, in keeping with the look of the place, but it also had a kinetic barrier that would stop a cannon blast.

The door opened. Miranda pushed Shepard out into the sunlight for the first time in a year and a half. The light was watery - the planet was usually shrouded in clouds and fog - but it was enough to make Shepard's eyes squeeze shut at once, tears leaking out of them.

"Damn it," Miranda said. She put her hand over Shepard's eyes before Shepard could lift her own hand to do so. Her fingers were long and slim. It took Shepard a moment to realize Miranda was angry at herself, not Shepard.

"It's all right," Shepard said, gently pushing Miranda's hand out of the way to cover her own eyes. Lifting her own bare arm was like lifting a weight at the gym. "Got a pair of sunglasses I can borrow?"

"One moment, Shepard." Miranda went back inside at a jog. She came back a minute later with what looked like a strip of mylar. She placed it over Shepard's eyes and it curved around her face, adhering to her temples and cheekbones. At once the agonizing sunlight became comfortable.

Shepard smiled. "I see fashions have changed while I was away." Her smile slipped. "I have a lot to catch up on."

"There'll be time for that. For now, just relax."

You should talk, Shepard thought. She decided that wasn't the way to approach it.

Now that she could see, Shepard saw they were in a courtyard. Stone walls curved around them. The courtyard was filled with Earth plants - either they were imported, or Miranda was lying about their location, which seemed likely. There were ferns in several varieties, Japanese maples, lilies, and many others she couldn't name. Shepard was no gardener, but that didn't keep her from appreciating one. At the center of the garden was a pond, the light sparkling on the ripples made by many-colored fish.

"Beautiful," Shepard said.

Miranda glanced around, as if noticing for the first time. "I guess so. I haven't really had time to look at it. And I suppose I got used to places like this, growing up."

That was as good an opening as any. Shepard said, "You were engineered, weren't you?"

"That's obvious, I imagine."

"It's not because you're so smart, or good-looking. It's because you're so hard on yourself."

"I don't need you to psychoanalyze me, Shepard."

"I'm not. I've seen it before."

Miranda pushed her along in silence for a moment. Despite herself, she said, "Seen what?"

"You don't take credit for your successes. You only blame yourself for your mistakes. You were born with a shopping list of expectations already written out for you."

"Jacob used to say the same thing."

Shepard nodded. "So you didn't believe him either?"

Miranda wanted to tell Shepard to leave it alone. She hated feeling so transparent to this near stranger. Yes, Miranda knew her inside and out, but that was when she was just a dead body and a Cerberus database. Now she was a person, which Miranda was much less fond of dealing with, and a strong-willed and unpredictable person at that.

But at the same time, it felt good to talk about this, in a way it hadn't with Jacob. "I...can't take credit for them, Shepard. The brains, the looks, the biotics...they were all paid for, with someone else's intentions in mind." She wasn't ready to talk about her father.

"Maybe, but you're the one who decides what to do with them. And a lot of people would have done a lot less."

"But you think I'm a terrorist," Miranda said.

"I...don't know."

Miranda smiled. Your turn to be conflicted, she thought. Don't know everything yet, do you?

Shepard said, "I don't know enough to have an opinion yet." And, just like that, the conflict was gone. She'd decided what she could, set aside what she couldn't, and her mind was clear.

Miranda envied her.


	4. Chapter 4

Miranda pushed Shepard through another door that led from the courtyard into an arched tunnel. Shepard had heard the rhythmic roar and hiss in the courtyard, but she'd assumed it was the wind in the leaves of the trees that towered over her. She hadn't dared hope.

But it was true. Miranda pushed her out onto a stone terrace that looked over the ocean, the waves crashing and foaming on the glistening black rocks below. She had looked out of her window and seen a green wooded hillside descending into water, but there were no waves, so she thought it was a lake. It must have been an inlet.

She had always loved being near the sea. And now she saw it wasn't any sea on Earth, or any planet she remembered visiting. The water was too dark, almost midnight blue, and an immense red moon, streaked and scarred with meteor impacts, was sinking slowly behind it.

A smile spread across Shepard's face. It made her scars hurt, but she ignored them. "You've been holding out on me," she said.

"This is a safe house," Miranda said. "We use it to hide people - mostly friendly. So we thought it should be as comfortable as possible." She seemed to be referring to some foolish weakness that was beneath her.

"I'm glad I'm on the friendly list, despite everything," Shepard said.

We'll see if that's the right one, Miranda thought.

Shepard looked out over the water in silence for a while. Miranda mentally drafted her next report to the boss. A sentry, armed and armored like the one inside, paced the terrace, his steady footsteps strangely adding to the feeling of peace.

Eventually, Miranda turned Shepard's chair around to go back inside. Shepard drew in a breath. The view was almost as impressive as the sea, but she hadn't noticed it until now. A square tower of wood and stone and ivy rose high over the one- and two-story outbuildings that curved around it. Turrets and balconies with hanging gardens adorned it, and the arched windows had diamond panes. Below, more sentries walked this way and that, their heads looking in every direction.

"This physical therapy," Shepard said. "Can we do it outside?"

Miranda shook her head. "It's an unnecessary security risk. And we put an antigrav field generator in your room, at great - "

"Please?"

Miranda stopped. "All right," she heard herself say.

* * *

Miranda took Shepard all around the castle. It was built on a crag of rock that jutted out into the sea. In fact the sea had carved its way inward and around it, so there was even a drawbridge to connect it to the mainland, over a cauldron of white water and cruel, jagged black rocks far below.

The drawbridge was of course always up, and useless for defense anyway. Shepard's chair could cross the chasm, and on this otherwise uninhabited world, the threat would come from orbit. For that, Shepard saw, there were at least a dozen Gardian batteries camouflaged among the tall evergreen trees inside the castle walls.

The outbuildings included a gym with a swimming pool and skyball court, a greenhouse, a barracks, a garage, an armory, and a firing range. "Don't bother trying to break into those," Miranda said. Shepard said nothing.

Connected to the tower was a two-story chapel with an observation gallery. "Not many of the staff are religious," Miranda said, her voice swallowed up by the dim empty space. She knew Shepard wasn't either. "So there are no formal services. People just come here whenever they feel like it."

Shepard was looking up at the arched stained-glass windows, the motes of dust suspended in the blue and gold and red shafts of light that streamed from them, and thinking of Ashley. There were times when she envied her beliefs. Come to think of it, this was one of them. But instead of God bringing her back from the dead...

"Miranda," she said. "What did you bring me back to do? What exactly is the price of my resurrection?"

"Three billion, six hundred fifty-two million, ninety-eight thousand, one hundred and twelve point three credits, as of this morning," Miranda said. "And we're not done yet."

Shepard folded her arms. "If you want me to pay that back, you're going to be waiting a while."

Miranda smiled. "No. We just want you to stop the Reapers."

Shepard shook her head. "There's more than that. What are they doing?"

"Shepard..."

"Tell me." It was gentle, but it was an order.

Miranda's mouth thinned. Shepard was in no position to give her orders, but... She let out a deep sigh. "There are human colonies, out in the Terminus systems, vanishing without a trace. We think the Reapers are involved somehow."

"And I'm sitting in a chair, drinking in the scenery." Shepard's hands gripped the armrests and she started to lift herself upright.

"Shepard. You go back in this condition, and those three and a half billion credits will be wasted in your first fight."

Shepard was standing, trembling all over. Miranda stood facing her, fists clenched at her sides. Her first instinct was to push Shepard back into the chair, but she decided, cruelly, to wait her out.

It didn't take long. Shepard's knees gave out and she pitched forward into Miranda's arms. Rather than put her back into the chair, Miranda held on to her. "Damn it, this is why I didn't want to tell you this. You have to - "

Shepard's face turned to her, and Miranda's anger melted at once. There were tears standing in Shepard's eyes. They were so blue...

"It's not fair," Shepard said. "My crew, and now this. All those people dying, and I can't help them."

"We don't know they're dying," Miranda said, though she had little doubt. She reached up and brushed a few strands of Shepard's red hair away from her face. It was almost to her jaw now. "Kate. You've done more than anyone has. You've given literally everything. And now you can do more still. But first you have to get well. That's what you can do for them now."

It wasn't enough, of course - Miranda could see that in Shepard's face - but it was something. Shepard's eyes looked down, and they were thoughtful now, rather than despairing. Miranda lowered her gently back into the chair.

"And you think I'm too hard on myself." Miranda ventured a smile. In the aftermath of her tears, Shepard couldn't help but laugh. It was the physical strain that caused Shepard's emotional reaction, Miranda decided. She hoped so, anyway. Shepard had lost people before, and gotten through it just fine. If she started cracking under it now...

"So what was the price you had to pay?" Shepard asked.

"What?"

"Your engineering. You said it was paid for, with someone else's goals in mind."

"Oh. Yes, my father. Well..."

* * *

Miranda took Shepard back into the tower.

"I'd like to see the med-bay," Shepard said. "Where you rebuilt me."

"We didn't do that here. It was on a station in deep space. We're just finishing up here."

"I remember you...looking down at me. You wore a mask, but I remember your eyes. I...was trying to say something to you."

Damn it, Miranda thought. "The sedative wore off early one time. I hope you didn't feel any pain?" She was making final repairs to Shepard's skeletal muscles, and had her skin laid open in a dozen different places.

"No. But it was recent. It was here."

"That was, yes."

"I'd like to see it."

"It would be better if you didn't. It might upset you."

"It's all right. You'll be there."

Miranda didn't expect that. "All right." Shepard kept surprising her. And getting her way.

Miranda pushed Shepard down the stairs, to the basement, then through a hidden door that she opened by placing her hand against one of the stones.

It was as Shepard dimly remembered. Cold, and silent except for the hum of a ventilator. The table was in the center of the room. The top was padded, but the rest was gleaming metal. Several powerful lamps hung over it. The walls and floor were white and featureless. There was various equipment: tissue regenerators, nanoimagers, stasis units, sterilizers.

"When was the last time this room was used to torture someone instead?" Shepard said.

Miranda knew better than to deny it. "I don't know," she said. That was true.

"I'll bet it's effective. Take them outside to look at the ocean. Or up to one of those cozy rooms and bring them dinner. Then ask if they want to come back down here. That must break a lot of them right there. So is this where I end up, if I don't cooperate? If I try to escape?"

"Jesus, Shepard, of course not."

"Why not? How am I different from Admiral Kahoku?" Fear swept through Shepard's useless body. She was used to fighting, but...if they wanted to put her on that table, she could barely even struggle. She saw the restraints carving bloody rings into her frantic wrists and ankles as she screamed into those uncaring lights.

"We didn't spend - "

"3.6 billion credits on him. What if I betray you? All that money, wasted."

"You can't," Miranda said. Her fists knotted at her side, and at first Shepard thought she was angry.

"Why not?"

"You can't. I've put two years of my life into this, Shep - Kate. Into you."

"Your father must have said the same thing."

Miranda actually flinched as if Shepard had struck her. "This isn't like that at all. We gave you - "

"Life? So did he. That didn't give him the right to tell you how to live it."

Miranda opened her mouth to say something. Then she closed it. She looked down. Her face held something Shepard hadn't seen there before: doubt. The room was silent.

Shepard's hand flew to her temple as a horrid thought jumped at her. "Do I have a control chip in my head?" That was worse than torture. Instead of a few months of total dependency, she would have a lifetime of it. Or, if they kept bringing her back, an eternity...

Miranda shook her head quickly. "No."

"No?"

"No." Miranda took a breath. She met Shepard's eyes, with obvious effort. "I...had an argument with the boss over that. I wanted to put one in."

"Your father could have put one in you."

"Yes." Miranda's voice was small. "Yes, I suppose he could have."

"Why do you think he didn't?" Shepard's voice was gentler now.

"I...suppose for the same reason the boss didn't want you to have one. He must have been afraid it would change my personality. He thought I'd be just like him, do whatever he wanted, just because he created me."

"Do you think he was right?"

Miranda's shoulders, which were hunched together, slumped. "Yes. I was wrong. You should be left the way you are. I'm...beginning to see how you accomplished what you did."

A smile tugged at Shepard's mouth. "I can't even stand up."

"You know what I mean. You have...something that inspires people. Makes them want to be better than they are. For you. Maybe it's that you do the same for them. Anyway, it would be foolish to - to go to such trouble to bring you back, and then to handicap you. To not let you lead."

"Why did you think I should have one? Other than my being your mortal enemy."

Miranda began pacing. "I didn't agree with your decision to sacrifice human lives to save the Council. I was afraid that you'd continue to put the Council's interests ahead of humanity's. But what we're facing is bigger than that. The boss thinks that Cerberus is humanity. And I thought so, too. But maybe it isn't. Maybe some of it is us, and some is you."

She stopped and turned to Shepard. "Do you trust me? After what I've told you?"

"I...want to. I'm just afraid."

"Don't be." Miranda sank down so her face was level with Shepard's. "You have nothing to be afraid of while I'm here. I promise."

"What will you do if you have to choose? Between me and Cerberus?"

Miranda frowned. "I've never thought about it before." Her eyes flicked down as she thought of Oriana. When they came back up, they were worried. "I...Shepard, I don't know."

Shepard nodded. "At least you're honest."

No, I'm not even that, Miranda thought. She felt sick. She stood quickly and walked around behind Shepard's chair. "Let's get out of here. I'm freezing."


	5. Chapter 5

The rest of the tour was less eventful. Miranda showed Shepard the dining room, which was in the basement. It was all dark wood, with an intricate chandelier and a huge fireplace, and heraldic shields on the walls. It made Shepard think of a hunting lodge. "Not many people eat in here," Miranda said. Shepard didn't plan to either.

The second floor had a library, which interested Shepard more. She traced her fingertips gently over one row of ancient embossed leather spines. She'd never read a book except on her omni-tool or a datapad. Paper was too expensive. This was an anachronistic luxury, like riding horses or shooting powder-fired guns.

Her fingers stopped. "Miranda...can you read to me when I go to sleep? The way you used to?" If she was a captive here, she might as well make the most of it.

"You heard that?"

"Yes. No one's ever read to me before. That I remember, anyway."

Miranda blinked. Even her father had read to her. "Well...sure. Dickens?"

Shepard smiled. "No, the other one. About philosophy."

* * *

Shepard didn't have any dinner. She was still full from breakfast. She lay propped up in the bed. Miranda sat reading to her. The pale yellow walls and the white curtains over the windows flickered with the lights of the candles.

Miranda stopped in mid-word when she saw Shepard start and look at the window.

"What is it?" Miranda's hand was on the pistol at her hip.

But a smile spread across Shepard's face. "It's raining."

They sat and listened to the sound of the rain against the window. After a while, Miranda read some more.

Eventually she turned out the lamp and settled herself in her chair. She was looking forward to sleeping in her own bed again. She'd tried a cot, but it made her back stiff.

In the darkness, over the sound of the rain, she heard Shepard's voice.

"Miranda...whatever your reasons were...you're the reason I get to listen to all this again."

* * *

At Miranda's request, Jacob cobbled together a portable antigrav field generator from parts he'd scrounged somewhere in the castle. She pushed it out onto the stone terrace overlooking the sea, and went to work on Shepard.

Shepard found that her thought of fooling Miranda about her physical condition, to aid in her escape, was hopeless. Miranda was more thorough than any drill instructor Shepard remembered, though she used less coarse language.

Shepard was used to pushing herself brutally hard, but Miranda pushed her harder. Shepard knew that was her job, and accepted it. She hadn't been under someone else's orders in such minute detail in a long time. It was strange, but not unpleasant. After the more grueling days, Shepard often dreamt about being back at the Academy. That was better than the nightmares.

Of course, at first, it was only the most basic movement. Things that Shepard once took for granted were now her limits. She lifted her arms out to her sides, again and again, then held them, until her muscles screamed and her lips skimmed back from her teeth and sweat poured down her face. Day by day, she grew stronger. Then Miranda dialed the gravity up, and she became weak all over again.

The first night, Miranda pushed the antigrav chair, containing an exhausted Shepard, into the bathroom. She stripped off Shepard's shirt and pants and dropped them in a sweat-soaked heap. Shepard shifted her hips to slide her underpants down, but let Miranda unhook her bra. Miranda had stopped giving Shepard sponge baths once Shepard was able to use her arms again, but now she wrung out every drop of Shepard's endurance in training. In return, she promised to help Shepard clean up. They were both used to it, anyway.

Miranda lifted Shepard into a chair she'd put in the shower. Then she took the sponge - it would be easier on Shepard's still-healing skin than her hands - and went to work. Shepard just closed her eyes, nearly falling asleep as the hot water coursed over her.

By the time Miranda was done, her black uniform was dripping wet and soapy. At least she'd thought to take off her boots. Shepard was out by the time Miranda finished toweling her off. Miranda picked her up and carried her to bed. She didn't bother trying to put Shepard into sleeping clothes; she just put an extra blanket over her. She suddenly realized she'd missed doing that.

* * *

The next day, Shepard was too sore to do anything except lie in bed and read. Miranda needed to write some reports on what she'd observed the day before anyway, so she gave Shepard a datapad. As she said before, there were no news feeds, but there was a large library.

Of course, Shepard had some more interesting reading in mind. They either didn't know about her hacking skills, which seemed unlikely, or this was just another test. She got into the network, though not easily. She looked at the security systems and decided they were too well-protected to attack remotely. But the Lazarus project files...

Most of it was impenetrable medicalese, or incomprehensible data. Still, it didn't appear fake. She found some progress reports that were more helpful. She really had been dead or nearly dead for over a year and a half, and Cerberus really had spent billions rebuilding her. She found recordings of some of the procedures. She skimmed through a few of them, shuddered, and quickly turned them off, trying to blot the images from her mind.

There were also recordings of discussions between Miranda and her staff, and even of their individual research. She saw Miranda spend more than an hour - which, she realized, was an eternity for that computerlike brain - poring over photos of Shepard, making sure her eyes were the right shade of blue, her hair the right tint of red. She heard Miranda listen to hours of recordings of Shepard's voice, gathered from God knew where - tens of thousands of words, again and again, making sure her vocal chords were rebuilt just right.

Miranda walked back in while Shepard was listening. She just smiled. "Well done, Shepard."

Shepard put the datapad down. "You could have delegated that. It's way beneath your abilities."

Miranda folded her arms. "That's the point. People care about the broad strokes, the things that challenge them. They ignore the details." She began pacing. "They just don't need perfection, the way I do. I accept that. It helps me get ahead. But...in Wilson, it infuriated me. In Jacob, it just makes me wish I was more patient."

"What about in me? I'm hardly perfect."

Miranda looked out the window. "I know. And yet somehow...you're Shepard, and I'm just Miranda Lawson. I've tried to understand it, believe me."

"But you're so patient with me. You've never even raised your voice. That can't just be perfectionism."

Miranda smiled over her shoulder. "Well, there is a certain pride in it. I helped you get better, and when I watch you surpass me - again - I'll know you couldn't have done it without me."

Shepard said, "Do you have any kids?"

Miranda looked back out the window. "No."

Shepard smiled. "From what I've seen, you should."

Miranda turned back to face her. "Shepard, do I tell you how to run your life?"

Shepard's smile faded at once. Then a ghost of it tugged at her lips. "Yes."

Miranda couldn't help but laugh. But there was something else on her face Shepard hadn't seen from her before: sadness. "I'm sorry, it's just...no one's ever told me that before."

"I get the feeling not many people get to see this side of you."

Miranda's folded arms tightened until she seemed to be hugging herself. "Anyway...I can't."

"I'm sorry." Shepard paused. "What about adoption? A lot of orphans in the galaxy who need a loving parent - I know."

"You have an answer for everything."

"That's why I'm Shepard."

Miranda laughed again. She shook her head, but she was still smiling. She walked over and sat down on the bed next to Shepard. She said, "I do have a younger sister..."

* * *

"I think you've got me at three Gs already," Shepard said one night, as Miranda pushed her into the bathroom to clean up after a brutal workout, "and just aren't telling me, so I'll become some kind of super-soldier. Cerberus seems to have a fetish for them." She was trembling with exhaustion, and felt like she'd been beaten all over.

"Only point seven five," Miranda said as she began the nightly ritual of pulling off Shepard's sweat-soaked clothes. "In fact, you will be. Your skeleton is reinforced with titanium foam and your muscles are more than half synthetic."

"Any chance you can replace the other half?" Shepard slid her underpants down over her legs and kicked them away. Her legs looked much better, she saw with satisfaction. They were fair, not pale, and toned, and the scars were fading.

She caught Miranda glancing down at her own uniform. "If you don't want to get that wet, just take it off. I don't care." She smiled. "It's only fair. You've seen me."

"I...suppose you're right." Objectively speaking, I'm better looking, Miranda thought. So why am I shy? She unzipped the black top and shrugged out of it, folding it neatly and putting it on the counter. Then she stepped out of her pants and folded them as well. She left her underwear on. Shepard sat with her eyes closed, perhaps already asleep.

Miranda soaped Shepard's neck, her shoulders, her back. She lifted Shepard's left arm, then her right, and soaped them. She made her way down Shepard's chest, her stomach, to her thighs. You can see she's been ill, she thought, but no worse than that. She was lifting Shepard's left foot when she realized she'd forgotten the sponge and was washing Shepard with her hands. Taking off her own clothes must have made her think she was taking a shower herself. Well, Shepard's skin was healed enough. Miranda hadn't pulled at any scar tissue.

She turned the water off and patted Shepard dry with a large fluffy white towel, then herself. She put her uniform back on, pleased at its dryness. Then she carried Shepard in to bed.

Shepard sighed and smiled as she started to turn over on her side. "Hold on," Miranda said. She went back to the bathroom and returned with a comb. "Your hair's long enough now that you'll get tangles," she said as she elevated Shepard's bed to a sitting position. She combed Shepard's hair with her usual thoroughness. Shepard was snoring gently before she finished. She kept combing a little longer than she had to. She always thought she would look good with red hair.


	6. Chapter 6

Miranda had Shepard doing her exercises at full gravity faster than either of them expected, maybe because she promised Shepard they would go on a walk down the beach as soon as Shepard was able.

When the day finally came, it was foggy and misty, as it often was. That didn't dampen Shepard's enthusiasm at all. Despite the interruption in her work, Miranda found that she, too, was looking forward to it.

Miranda ordered the drawbridge lowered for the first time since she'd arrived. The chains clanked and the thick wooden bridge landed on the opposite ledge with a crash, creaking as it settled. Miranda gestured Shepard ahead.

They walked down a gently sloping, curving path toward the water. The dirt under their feet gave way to sand. Walking was suddenly much more work for Shepard as she fought for balance with each step, but they soon reached the wet, packed sand near the water.

Shepard stopped. Grunting with effort, she raised her right leg, reached down, pulled off her boot, and slipped off the sock underneath.

"What are you doing?"

"Walking barefoot," Shepard said as she did the same with her left foot. She put the socks inside the boots, left them, and kept walking.

Miranda shrugged and followed.

Shepard smiled over her shoulder. "Don't you want to?"

"I don't even like sand getting in my boots." Or on them, but she wasn't going to worry about that today.

Shepard walked into the water, letting the wavelets wash over her feet. She looked out at the water, watching the dark blue waves grow white crests and roll over and collapse as they rushed toward her. Every so often she glanced down. At last she reached down and picked up an agate. It was red and translucent, with hazy white bands, like rings around a volcanic planet. She held it out for Miranda to see, then noticed that Miranda wasn't paying attention.

Shepard said, "What are you thinking about?"

"A paper I'm writing about one of the technologies I invented during the Lazarus project. We'll publish it in one of our front scientific journals. It doesn't have any strategic value, but it'll benefit humanity."

"I see." Shepard tilted her head. "You're never here in the present, are you? You're always somewhere up ahead."

"Looking at the scenery is hardly the best use of my mind, Shepard." Once again, Miranda found herself feeling defensive without knowing why. "I've seen it before. I need to be productive. At all times. Or else I'm...unhappy."

Shepard nodded. "I'm not sure whether to envy you or not."

"It's the way I am."

They walked in silence for a while. The waves crashed in and hissed away. Shepard first saw the sea when she was six. Seeing it, she realized the world had been there before her and would go on after her. She heard birds calling to one another as they flew out over the water, and thought, if the Reapers kill us all, those birds will go on migrating across an empty planet, and forget we were ever here. Individually, we live longer, yet we're a blink of an eye to them. It was hardly as reassuring as Ashley's religious beliefs, but there was a certain cold comfort to it.

Shepard said, "So you and Jacob have a history, I gather. Do you have anyone now?"

Miranda's face twisted. "Not that."

"Sore subject?"

"I suppose it's my father again. Remember, he wanted a dynasty. How do you build a dynasty? Arranged marriages. I'll spare you the details of the men he tried to set me up with. After that, I've never taken kindly to suggestions."

"I'd hardly presume to do that."

Miranda smiled. "Your turn, Shepard. What about you?"

Shepard looked away, at the water. "There's no one. My crew was my family. That was enough. And even if there were someone..."

You died, Miranda thought. She reached out and squeezed Shepard's shoulder. "We should stop. We've gone nearly half a mile." Shepard was breathing hard, and her shirt was damp with sweat, despite the cool, cloudy day.

They had almost reached a bend in the cliffs that towered over the beach. Shepard said, "Can we just see what's around there?"

So Miranda let her walk a little farther. Around the bend was a spectacular waterfall, its roar almost hidden by the sound of the ocean. Clouds of white mist drifted over them. Shepard just smiled and closed her eyes and listened and breathed it in.

They'd hardly started back when Shepard stepped wrong and twisted her ankle. She hopped backward on one foot, waving her arms for balance. Miranda caught her arm. "Shepard. Are you all - "

She stopped. Shepard's face was white, her chest heaving, her eyes wide. "Shepard!" Miranda's hands were on Shepard's shoulders. "What's wrong?"

Shepard looked at her, then back down at the sand. She shook her head. "I...just startled, I guess."

Miranda looked down as well. A patch of sand shifted near Shepard's bare left foot. "It's just a little sand crab."

Shepard blew out a breath. "Yeah. Just surprised me. Never mind."

She began looking for a walking stick, but Miranda told her not to bother. The sun was setting, unseen but diffusing a reddish light through the low clouds, as Miranda carried her back across the drawbridge into the castle.

Shepard smiled sleepily. "Dame Miranda. She slew the dragon named Death."

Shepard sat on the side of the bed as Miranda washed the sand off her feet and looked at her ankle. "Just twisted," Miranda said. "We'll take it easy tomorrow." She turned down the lamp. "Get some rest, Princess Kate."

* * *

Miranda sat up in bed, heart hammering. Her bare feet were on the wooden floor and she was halfway to the door before she realized what had woken her up. She had moved back into her own quarters a few days ago, but she still had alarms tied to Shepard's vital signs. She ran down the stairs three at a time and flung Shepard's door open.

Shepard also was sitting up in bed, her red hair disheveled and her chest heaving under her white pajama top. "It's all right," she said to Miranda, but her voice sounded as rusty as it had the first time she woke up, months ago. "It, it was just a nightmare."

"I hope I didn't scare you more when I charged in here," Miranda said.

Shepard let out a shaky laugh. "No, I knew you'd come."

Miranda went to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. Shepard downed it in one long drink as Miranda sat on the bed next to her. "Better?"

Shepard nodded, a drop of water sliding down her chin and shining in the reflected moonlight, as she set the glass on the bedside table.

"What was it?" Miranda asked. "If you don't mind telling me."

"No, I'd...prefer to, actually." Shepard looked down and her brows came together and she hugged her knees. "I was...in the marines again, I think. I was sleeping, outside, in a bedroll. There were lots of other people sleeping around me. And then something shook me awake, and I heard screaming. I thought at first it was an earthquake."

It was all Miranda could do to keep her face still. Akuze, she thought. That idiot Wilson swore Shepard would never -

"Miranda. Are you all right?"

Miranda nodded. "Yes...it's just vivid, the way you describe it." Unwillingly, she asked, "What happened then?"

Shepard frowned. "It's...some kind of...monster came up out of the ground. I can't remember what it looked like, but everyone was shooting at it. There were so many muzzle flashes, they lit the night to day. And...it didn't do any good. It killed them. All of them. Then it got me." Her almond-shaped blue eyes were wide and shining in the moonlight.

"Shepard," Miranda heard herself say, "come upstairs. I have a double bed. You can have half of it. I want to keep an eye on you, and I'm tired of sleeping in a chair." She made the offer out of guilt, she thought. Or protectiveness.

"Hey." There was a smile in Shepard's voice, but it was still shaky. "You all right?"

Miranda said, "I'm sure it's nothing. We'll run some tests tomorrow." She stood up. "Come on." She turned and walked to the door, not giving Shepard a chance to argue.

"All right," Shepard said. Did she sound relieved? She pushed the blanket down and slid off the bed. She followed Miranda out the door and up the flight of stairs.

* * *

Miranda's quarters must be the ones her boss used when he stayed here, Shepard thought. The door opened to an alcove with a wooden desk, bookshelves on either side that reached to the ceiling, and a bay window that faced the forested hill behind the castle. To the left was a hallway that led to a small library and the bathroom. To the right was the door to the bedroom, which had a vaulted ceiling with a chandelier and a wide canopy bed. Transparent doors on either side led to balconies, a small one that faced the woods, and a larger one that looked out over the sea.

Miranda had been lying on the left side of the bed, so Shepard crawled under the blanket on the right side. Miranda went over to the door that faced the water. "Maybe this will help." She slid it open. The unseen boom and whoosh of the ocean rolled softly into the room.

"Thanks." Shepard was afraid she'd have trouble going back to sleep, especially in a strange bed, but she felt herself drifting away almost at once. She thought about being on a boat on the ocean with Miranda, and soon she was dreaming.

* * *

Miranda woke up once more, in the early morning, though she didn't know why. She hadn't been dreaming. Then she noticed Shepard was snuggled up against her, and had lost most of her blanket somehow. Her bare arms and neck were pale in the faint light. She must have been trying to get warm. Miranda gently flipped her own blanket over Shepard. She was too warm, anyway.

Outside, a cloud must have moved. Some of the red light of the moon streamed in the window and caught Shepard's hair, seeming almost to set it aflame. Before Miranda even thought about it, her hand reached out and her long, slim fingers sifted lightly through the soft red strands. She'd wanted to do this earlier, when she was using the comb.

She froze as Shepard smiled in her sleep and moaned, "mm-hmmm". She heaved an immense sigh into her pillow. Her breath tickled Miranda and smelled faintly of mint.

Miranda blinked and found tears in her eyes. She trusts me. Utterly. Whether she admits it or not. And...I want her to. If only I deserved it.


	7. Chapter 7

"Miranda?"

Miranda was working at her desk. She turned. Shepard was standing in the doorway. She had one hand behind her back.

"How was your walk?" Miranda asked. Miranda had a lot of reports to write today, so she'd let Jacob take Shepard on her daily walk.

"Good. I brought you something," Shepard said, stepping forward. She stopped abruptly when Miranda's hand dropped to the butt of her pistol.

Miranda jerked her hand away. "Sorry, Shepard. Occupational hazard."

Shepard laughed. "Yeah, this is pretty dangerous." She took her hand out. She was holding a single flower. It was from a plant that grew by the waterfall where she and Miranda went on their first walk. It had curved, sharp white petals that made Miranda think of a pinwheel, with a fiery red center.

"It made me think of you," Shepard said. "Immaculate outside, but warm inside."

Miranda's hand slowly reached out and took the flower. She had no idea what to say. Her father had given her whatever she wanted - and always with strings attached. Men had given her presents, expensive ones, to try to bribe her into bed. Her boss had given her safety, and Oriana's safety, in return for her loyalty. When, she asked herself, was the last time someone just gave her something? Just as a simple expression of their feelings for her.

The flower blurred as tears brimmed in her eyes. Shepard just watched her. She seemed to understand.

Miranda stepped forward and then Shepard found her face resting on Miranda's shoulder, breathing in the pine scent of Miranda's hair, feeling Miranda's arms tight around her. It was like all the dreams and daydreams she'd had, but now the edges were sharp, the colors bright. She felt Miranda's breath tickling the side of her neck. She ran her fingertips slowly up and down Miranda's back. She let out a tremendous sigh that ruffled Miranda's hair.

"Oh, God," Shepard whispered. She added, spacing out each word for emphasis, "Whatever you do, don't let go."

"I won't," Miranda said.

Shepard tilted her head back and laughed a little, giddy. Then she turned her face and there were Miranda's blue eyes with tears still in them and her pouting generous mouth and Shepard kissed her. And Miranda moaned and opened her mouth and Shepard pressed her tongue inside. Miranda tasted like amaretto. Shepard could feel every breath she was taking and every breath Miranda was taking and every place they were touching.

Miranda broke the kiss. Shepard noticed that her tears were running over now. She buried her face in Shepard's shoulder. She was shaking. Shepard frowned as she kept stroking Miranda's back. "Miranda...what's wrong?"

Miranda's voice was muffled. "I can't do this."

Shepard reached up and ran her fingers through Miranda's hair. "Why?"

Miranda raised her face to look at Shepard's, her arms still around her. Shepard's blue eyes searched hers. Once again, she saw something there she hadn't before: fear.

She kept up the rhythm of stroking Miranda's hair and said, "It's all right. Tell me."

Miranda kept her eyes on Shepard's, though she desperately wanted to look away. "Kate...you have a memory that we - that I blocked." She was talking quickly, trying to get through it. "It's traumatic. I was afraid it would interfere with your recovery. And I've been telling myself you weren't ready for it. But that was an excuse. I waited too long...and started caring for you...and now I've been putting it off."

Shepard's fingers stopped. "The dreams."

"Yes."

"I...do you think we should leave it blocked?"

My God, she's asking me, Miranda thought. "We can't, not forever."

"Would you, if you could?"

Yes. Miranda closed her eyes. "No. For better or worse, it's part of you."

Shepard said, "There's more to it, though."

"Yes. It has to do with Cerberus."

Shepard took a deep breath. "Tell me. Before you unblock it. I'd rather hear it from you."

"You were with the 11th Recon Platoon." Miranda sounded as if she were reading her own obituary. "They were sent to a planet called Akuze to reestablish contact with the colonization team there."

Shepard's eyes went far away. "I...remember serving with them, but..." She shook her head. "I don't remember going there. Or being detached. Just that my next tour was aboard the Kilimanjaro."

"You weren't detached. The platoon was wiped out by a thresher maw attack. You were the only known survivor."

"Thresher maw." It sounded like something Shepard had read about somewhere, but there was nothing attached to it. No memories, no emotions. "And...Cerberus did this?" Her arms were still around Miranda, but they felt like someone else's arms now.

"Yes. They - we were studying how they attacked. Trying to develop tactics for killing them."

Shepard's mouth twisted. "For that, you wiped out, what, thirty marines?"

"Fifty." Miranda's voice was hollow.

"Is there anything more?"

"Yes," Miranda said. She seemed to be drawn irresistibly forward into the dark water of her guilt, until it closed over her head. "There was another survivor. His name was Toombs. We captured him. We...ran tests on him to determine how he survived."

"What tests?"

"I don't know all of them. I know one was injecting him with thresher maw acid to see how he'd resisted it."

"Were you involved with this?"

"No." Thank God.

"But you agree with it."

"I..." Don't lie to her. Don't. "How many people are killed by those monsters every year? How many would have lived if we'd better understood how to kill them?" Miranda's fists were clenching and unclenching, unnoticed.

"But I was there too. So, once again. Why not me? No one knew who I was then."

Miranda closed her eyes. She just couldn't look at Shepard while she said it. "He was the one we caught."

Shepard said nothing. She just looked at Miranda, only a few inches away. She realized her hands had fallen to her sides. How, she thought, can the woman who reads to me at night, who held me when I had a nightmare, be the same woman who believes...this? And I knew it. She told me, from the beginning. And I didn't let myself see it. I told her to tell me this. I told her it would be all right. I was wrong.

Words came out of her. "Unblock it."

Miranda just nodded, and walked to the door. Shepard followed her.

* * *

It was in the basement, of course. Shepard sat on the table as Miranda prepared the solution. She looked at the needle in Miranda's hand, the metal gleaming dully in the dim light, and had to fight down an urge to flee.

Miranda cleared her throat. "It'll take a few minutes. And it won't seem like it just happened. It'll just...be there now when you think about it."

Shepard nodded and held out her arm. Miranda rubbed medi-gel on the site, so Shepard wouldn't feel the injection. She aligned the needle with the flow of blood, pushed it in, and slowly pressed the plunger down.

Shepard waited to feel something click inside her head, but of course she didn't. She just kept thinking, Akuze. Thresher maw. Cerberus. And the words began to have meaning. She kept pulling on the threads, and more came. The memories weren't raw and terrifying, as in her nightmares; more like jagged black rocks sunk in dark water.

Miranda watched Shepard's face grow older, harder. Her eyes narrowed, just a little, and wrinkles appeared around them that hadn't been there before. The corners of her mouth turned down a hair.

I killed her, Miranda thought. The woman I care for is dying, here, now, and I did it. She was afraid, but she forced herself to say something, to try and stop it. "Kate?"

Shepard said, "I'm...going to need some time. To think." She didn't look at Miranda.

Miranda swallowed. "All right." She fled.

* * *

Miranda walked up four flights of stairs, not seeing, not hearing, not thinking. She shut the door behind her, locked it. She sank slowly to the floor, hugging her knees. She stopped holding the nightmare at bay and let it flood in around her, over her.

Her eyes lit on something: the flower Shepard had brought her. It was lying on her desk. It needed water. She jumped to her feet and got a glass from the bathroom and put the flower in it. Its colors seemed very bright, its edges very sharp. As she looked at it, she began to cry.

* * *

Shepard went to her old room on the third floor, and didn't come out. Miranda thought of her putting fresh sheets on the bed, just as Miranda had done for her not long ago. She doesn't need you any more, a voice said in her mind.

Miranda didn't come out either. She didn't eat. She tried to finish her reports, but the words she had written only hours ago were now blurry and meaningless. She'd been so glad when Shepard interrupted her. For a moment, as Shepard held her, despite her guilt, she'd been...happy, she knew now. She hadn't even had time to know it when it was happening. Had she ever been happy before? She didn't remember.

And how fleeting it was. She'd always thought it would be her father's sins she would end up paying for. Of course not, Miranda, the voice said. The sins were yours.

That's not fair, she thought. I didn't give the order. I didn't even know.

Cerberus. Your choice. Your goals. Your people. The voice was Shepard's now.

The huge empty bed waited for her. Shepard didn't use perfume, but the pillow smelled of her shampoo. The morning after Shepard slept here, Miranda had offered to let her do so again. She'd covered her nervousness with a joke, something about the two of them being joined at the hip anyway. To her surprise, Shepard agreed.

Nothing had happened yet. In a way, that was even better. She got to listen to Shepard's sleepy voice as she drifted away, watch her as she twitched and sometimes smiled and said things as she dreamed, see her yawn and stretch when she woke up. There was the anticipation of knowing something might happen, but for now that was enough.

Miranda had just begun to get used to it. She was used to being alone. She'd always thought that was what she wanted, anyway.

And now she was again.

She needed sedatives to get to sleep. For the first time since escaping from her father, she just wanted to blot out all thought, all feeling, to get to the next day without having to live through the hours in between. Even so, she slept uneasily, hoping irrationally for Shepard to come upstairs, to say it was all right, to come back to her. But Shepard didn't.

Miranda woke like a train wreck. She staggered to the bathroom and got in the shower, watching dully as the drops ran down the glass, overtaking each other.

She was afraid as she approached Shepard's door. She'd been, at various times, faintly resentful, distracted, or alarmed, but never afraid. Her hand shook as she raised it to knock, once. She'd never had to knock, either.

She just wanted to hear Shepard say "come in".

The door opened. Shepard stood there, dressed in an old-fashioned pair of blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. Her jaw-length red hair was mostly in place, though a few strands stuck out in different directions. She looked well-rested. Her blue eyes were clear. Her fair skin shone in the morning light, the scars almost obliterated. There was a slight flush at her cheekbones, and her lips were pink and smooth. Her face was expressionless.

God, she's beautiful, Miranda thought. Why is she more so now that I've undoubtedly lost her?

"I, ah, wanted to see if you wanted breakfast," Miranda said. No, that wasn't what she meant to say. Shepard could get her own breakfast. "That is, we need to continue your therapy. And we still have weapons training, and - " Miranda realized she was talking to cover her discomfort. She shut up.

Shepard nodded. "Yeah. Let's go."

Miranda slumped a little, unable to conceal her relief. She knew their relationship - is that what it was? the voice said - was likely destroyed, but at least Shepard still agreed on the mission. Miranda could get through it.

After that...she'd get over it, she told herself. She had before.

Not something like this, the voice said.


	8. Chapter 8

They walked downstairs in silence. There were a thousand things Miranda wanted to ask Shepard. How she slept. What she dreamed about. Whether she had eaten. How she was feeling. All were impossible.

No, they're not, Miranda thought. Her health is your job. You need to know.

If something's wrong, she'll tell you. Miranda kept quiet.

They went to the firing range for the first time. It was a long, straight building near the front wall of the castle.

Miranda opened the weapon locker and took out a Predator, a box of thermal clips, and a clip belt. She handed the pistol to Shepard and explained the use of the clips. She had Shepard practice ejecting and replacing the clips, first standing still, then walking and not looking at the pistol, then jogging.

She had Shepard practice shooting a stationary target at increasing ranges. She made minute adjustments to Shepard's posture, her footing, her grip. For Miranda, having to touch Shepard's fingers, her arms, her neck, her legs, was a kind of torture, yet she no doubt made more adjustments than necessary. But Shepard didn't make an issue of it. She only asked, "How come my head remembers this, but my body doesn't?"

"Muscle memory is actually a misnomer. Most of it's in the cerebellum. But a lot of nerves and muscles were replaced, so the pathways aren't there anymore."

They went outside for physical therapy. It was raining lightly. Dark clouds out to sea suggested worse was coming.

Now that Shepard could do her exercises at full gravity, Miranda had her put on armor. Being mostly ceramic, it was more confining than heavy, but it made a difference. She had Shepard run on a treadmill until sweat poured from her despite the cold and steadily increasing rain.

By the time they went back inside the tower they could still hear it, pattering on the roofs of the turrets and balconies, running down drains and stone walls, splashing in puddles.

"How are you feeling?" Miranda asked.

"Sore," Shepard said. She rubbed the back of her neck.

The day before, Miranda would have offered to give her a massage. And told herself it was purely to help Shepard recover faster. She would have given much for Shepard to ask right then. But Shepard didn't.

* * *

Miranda was used to sleeping through thunderstorms, but this one woke her. She sat up. Lightning flashed, turning the inside of the room briefly to day. Rain lashed the windows.

Her right hand ached. She looked down and saw she was gripping her pistol. She slept with it under her pillow. Only the safety had kept it from going off.

She reached to the bedside table, took her gunbelt, put it on over her pajamas, and holstered the pistol. She put her bare feet on the floor, stood up, went to one of the windows, and looked out. She couldn't see anything, of course; between the clouds and the rain, it was a curtain of black. The occasional lightning only turned it to a curtain of silver.

She tapped her omni-tool. "Jacob?"

"Yeah."

"Is everything all right?"

"Fine. You okay?"

"I...think so. Call me if anything happens."

"Will do."

Miranda stood there a moment longer. Then she made up her mind. She walked out of bedroom to the alcove, to the door that led to the stairwell, put her ear against it, and listened. There was nothing except the sounds of the rain. She drew her pistol, stepped to one side, and opened the door.

The stairwell was empty. Holstering her pistol, but keeping a hand on it, she stepped outside and went down one flight of stairs. She knocked on Shepard's door.

She was just about to knock again when it opened. Shepard stood there, only a silhouette, wearing a white sleeping robe.

"Shepard. Are you all right?"

"Yes." Shepard's voice was sleepy, but she seemed to be waking up quickly. "What's wrong?"

"I...don't know. It's just a feeling." Miranda was embarrassed now. "I...had a nightmare."

To her surprise, Shepard said, "Well, come in. Tell me about it."

Miranda didn't expect Shepard to let her in any farther than the sitting room, but Shepard led her into the bedroom. She sat on the bed and motioned Miranda to the chair where she'd slept so many nights.

Miranda said, "I was lying in bed. You were there, next to me. You were asleep. And someone came into the room. He was dressed like my boss. He walked to the bed, and reached down and lifted you up. I realized he was taking you away. I tried to stop him, to wake you up, but I couldn't move, or speak. When he got to the door, he stopped and looked back at me for a moment. He was smiling. It was my father. Then I woke up."

Shepard said, "At least your dreams aren't hard to interpret."

"No, I guess not."

"There's more to it than what happened yesterday," Shepard said.

Miranda shook her head. She started to stand up. "I shouldn't have woken you."

"Tell me."

Miranda stopped. She sighed. "I had an argument with him this morning. The boss, that is." She looked down. "He's been putting pressure on me to say you're ready." She was annoyed with herself for making Shepard listen to her problem, but it had been going on for too long, and it helped just to talk about it. The boss' words still echoed: There are nearly a million people on Freedom's Progress, Miss Lawson. But, as Shepard had shown her, it was a lot easier to weigh the needs of one person against the needs of many when that one person wasn't right in front of you.

"I am ready," Shepard said.

"No, you're not. You just started training with a pistol. You need at least two more months here." That did help. Miranda knew she was on solid ground there.

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"It isn't funny. I'm not going to get you killed."

"No," Shepard said, still smiling. "Not when you've put two years of your life into me."

Miranda folded her arms. "It's not - "

She stopped. She had her pistol in her hand again before she was quite sure why. She gestured Shepard to get behind the bed. Shepard obeyed at once, though she had no weapon and could only watch over the top of the bed.

Miranda tapped her omni-tool with her index finger, poking through the pistol's trigger guard. A grid of security camera feeds appeared. One confirmed what the omni-tool had already told her with its silent tingling: there were four armed people coming up the stairs. They had crossed the invisible laser tripwire Miranda had secretly put on the second story landing. They either were sloppy, in a hurry, or didn't care whether she knew they were coming or not. The first guess was unlikely, the others unpleasant.

She kept her pistol aimed at the door as she retreated behind the bed. "No one's authorized up here except you, me, and Jacob," she said, keeping her voice down. She tapped her omni-tool. "Jacob."

The channel erupted in static. "Damn it. They're jamming everything."

"Hopefully that'll wake the guards up," Shepard said.

Miranda looked again at the security camera feeds. She didn't like what she saw. There was almost no activity. No sign of alarm.

"I..." Miranda looked at the armored, helmeted figures again. "I think they are the guards. Their armor has the Cerberus insignia on it. I assumed it was a ruse. But..." A mutiny? All these people are absolutely loyal.

To Cerberus, yes, a voice said inside her.

Shepard said, "You think your boss is giving you your walking papers?"

Miranda looked at her, eyes wide. "I don't know. But if they came from outside, we would have had a warning. I called Jacob before I came down. He said everything was fine. Jacob," she whispered. Now she had two people to be afraid for.

"Could he be in on this?"

"No. Never." Miranda watched the guards approach to door to Shepard's quarters. She knew she had no chance of stopping four armored troops in her pajamas, even with biotics.

They would order her to hand Shepard over, she realized. She was being relieved of command of the Lazarus Project. And after her repeated arguments with the boss, he'd evidently decided she wouldn't step down voluntarily. After Wilson, I should have learned, she thought. I still planned for an attack from without. Not from within.

Her eyes were drawn over to Shepard. Shepard just crouched there, behind the bed, her sleeping robe seeming to glow in the dim light, her short red hair tousled. She had to know what Miranda was thinking. That Miranda could just hand her over, and she could do nothing to stop it. Yet she was calm, just watching and waiting for Miranda to decide.

"Shepard," Miranda ordered, "stay in cover. When I go down, take my pistol. If you can get past them, leave me here and go down to the - "

"Stop," Shepard said. "You're coming with me."

"We don't have time to argue, Shepard," Miranda said. "They - " She looked at her omni-tool again. "They're still going up. But why..."

"They want you first. Or they think I'm up there with you."

Miranda thought, if this had happened two nights ago...

"Should we try to take them from behind?" Shepard asked.

"We'd never get them all, even with surprise."

Shepard said, "Is there anything we can use to distract the sentries outside? Draw them away?"

"There are some flashbangs rigged in your sitting room. But they're just supposed to slow an attacker down until help gets here." They didn't want anything more lethal, for fear Shepard would trigger one by accident.

Or use it on you, the voice said. That's what you were really worried about, wasn't it, Miranda?

"Come on," Shepard said, standing up and walking to the sitting room.

Miranda followed. "Damn it, Shepard - "

"It's all right. Cover the door. Where are the flashbangs?"

Miranda told her. One was nestled among the carefully arranged bric-a-brac on the table; another was disguised as a candle in the chandelier; yet another posed as a knot in the thick wooden door. Each was a small cylinder, holed like a cheese grater to emit light and noise. Shepard put one on the sill of her sitting room window, and the other two in her bedroom window. Miranda tapped the discreet control near each window to drop the outside barrier.

Shepard hadn't needed her antigrav chair for more than a week; it sat, seemingly forgotten, in the corner of her bedroom. Shepard shoved it toward the bathroom, and the only remaining window. Then she went to the closet and pulled out a black Cerberus uniform similar to Miranda's. She shrugged off her sleeping robe - despite the situation, Miranda couldn't help feeling a pang at seeing her standing there in her underwear, seeming nearly as vulnerable as when she'd first woken up - and threw on the uniform.

They went into the bathroom and shut the door. Miranda brought up the security camera feeds again, thanking God she and Jacob were the only ones who knew about them. The guards had given up knocking on the door to her rooms, and had just overridden the barrier. Now one of them knelt and placed something over the lock.

"Omni-gel isn't going to open that lock, you bastard," Miranda said.

After a minute, the guard reached the same conclusion. He reached to his belt and took out a small metal cone, which he placed over the lock. He tapped the side of the cone, and all four guards backed away from the landing.

Miranda silently counted down from five, her omni-tool ready. As the small charge went off, destroying the lock on her door, she triggered the flashbangs.

The tower shuddered with the simultaneous blasts. Shepard's sitting room and bedroom windows blew out, raining shards of melting plastic and splinters of wood over the stones of the terrace below and setting her curtains alight. The fire-suppression system reacted at once, recessed nozzles emerging from the dark wood ceiling timbers to douse the flames in jets of foam.

As the brief flare of light died, Shepard opened the bathroom window and keyed the controls of her antigrav chair.

"There they go," Miranda said, watching the cameras. Several of the sentries outside, having seen and heard the apparent explosion in Shepard's rooms, were now rushing to the entrance of the tower, their boots splashing through the puddles in the wet courtyard. Meanwhile, the guards outside Miranda's door, thinking they had heard only echoes of the charge they used to blast it open, were cautiously fanning out into her rooms, assuming she was hiding. At least their guns weren't drawn.

Shepard's chair rose slowly into the air, and she shoved it through the window, holding on to the armrests, then crawled out after it. She was quickly soaked by the cold rain, her hair plastered to her forehead, but she didn't care. When she was seated, she reached out a hand and pulled Miranda after her. As Miranda turned in midair to sit on Shepard's lap, she accidentally glanced down at the wet stones of the terrace three stories below. She moaned.

"Scared of heights?" Shepard asked. She seemed to be having a good time, even as the chair wobbled under the unaccustomed weight. Still, she locked her wrists firmly around Miranda's waist.

"It's falling from them that worries me," Miranda snapped.

"Sorry," Shepard said. She leaned forward and gave Miranda a light kiss on the cheek. "For luck," she said. Miranda wished she had a moment to appreciate it.

Miranda worked the chair's controls without looking down at the armrest. The chair turned away from the window, then gently tilted forward and began moving. It would normally hover about fifteen centimeters off the ground, descending gradually in case of a sudden change in elevation, but Shepard had overridden that.

They glided through the rainy night, high above the castle courtyard. Miranda had only her omni-tool sensor and the occasional flash of lightning to guide them, but with luck the darkness would keep them hidden as well.

"How do we get out of here?" Shepard said in Miranda's ear.

"There's a hangar about a mile down the coast. Downwind. The boss didn't want people having to listen to the noise of shuttles coming and going."

They had just cleared the outer wall when the searchlights came on. "Hold on," Miranda said, keying the chair into a drop that nearly lifted her out of Shepard's lap. One of the beams, a malevolent thing probing in the night, barely missed them. But it was inside the walls, and they were quickly out of its reach. Eventually someone would get a patrol flier or jetpack in the air. Given enough confusion, though, she and Shepard still had a chance.

Though the rain didn't stop, the moon peeked out from behind the clouds, washing the shore in its reddish reflected light. Miranda wished it hadn't, but there was something exhilarating about their nighttime sortie over the beach.

"You saved the princess again," Shepard said. "This time with a magic carpet."

Miranda had to smile. "I think the rescue is more mutual this time."

The rushing and receding white foam of the waves and the dark packed sand and wet black rocks sped by below them. They were low enough now that falling out wouldn't give her more than a few bruises, though the delay would still be fatal if Shepard - as Miranda knew she would - stopped to pick her up. She gripped the armrests tightly.

"We have company," Shepard said. She pointed out over the water. Miranda spared a second to look. A shape, slightly darker than the water, was following them, trying to stay close to the crests of the rolling waves to hide its wake. She thought about shooting at it, then decided to wait until she could make a sure kill. She wished the damned chair would go faster, but it wasn't meant for joyriding.

"There's the hangar," she said. It was built into the side of a hill, facing the water.

"All I see are rocks," Shepard said.

"It's a holographic projection." As they drew closer, she slowed the chair down. On the water, the boat - no, jet ski, she saw now - began to slow as well, turning in toward more shallow water and bobbing less. Miranda slowly raised the pistol and sighted carefully down the barrel. She had just slid her finger inside the trigger guard when she stopped. Her shoulders slumped and her lips pulled back from her white, even teeth in a huge smile. "It's Jacob."

* * *

They met him inside the hangar. Miranda had a moment of amusement by flying the chair straight at what appeared to be a rock wall. Shepard winced, but then they were through it. The chair settled to the metal deck and Miranda jumped out, followed by Shepard, as Jacob made a more conventional entrance through the door.

"I knew a couple of dozen traitors weren't going to stop you," Miranda told him.

He shook his head. "My assistant tried to relieve me. Must have figured I wouldn't go along. He was right. One thing I learned in the Alliance, it's your squad leader you follow into battle, not the admiral sipping tea up on the bridge." He looked at Miranda. "I'd have gone through all of them to reach you, if I could."

Miranda put a hand on his shoulder. "You'd have gotten killed for nothing. You did the right thing."

"You'll have a place on my ship, Jacob," Shepard said, "in whatever fleet we end up serving."

"Thanks, but right now we'd better figure out what ship we're leaving here in."

"Is that a question?" Miranda said. "We're taking the yacht."

"Are these shuttles FTL-capable?" Shepard asked, indicating the two blunt-nosed craft parked alongside the larger, sleeker yacht.

"Not for long," Miranda said. "Shepard, get the yacht warmed up. Jacob and I will fix the shuttles. Hurry, they'll be here any minute."

* * *

Miranda and Jacob walked onto the yacht's bridge. Shepard sat in the richly padded pilot's seat, her hands ready on the controls. "Let's go," Miranda said. Shepard's fingers went to work.

"You sure her memory's intact?" Jacob whispered to Miranda.

The yacht's ventral thrusters flared, lifting it off the metal deck, then the aft thrusters joined in and it glided out of the hangar, out over the water. Looking out the starboard viewport, Miranda saw the first groundcars darting over the beach, toward the hangar, but already they were no larger than ants.

"Satisfied, Jacob?" Miranda whispered back, smiling.

A transmission came in, ordering them to halt. Shepard killed the comm and pointed the yacht's nose at the sky. They were still in range of the Gardian batteries, but the crews had to know Shepard was aboard, and none of them dared fire.

The nameless planet fell away beneath them. "Jacob, could you take the conn?" Shepard said.

"Yes. Get some rest, Shepard. You've had a hell of a night." Jacob took her place in the pilot's seat. "Where are we going?"

"Ilium," Miranda said. "As fast as we can get there."

"That won't be soon. We're a long way out."

"I know." Miranda forced her worries about Oriana from her mind, until she could do something about them.

Shepard walked off the bridge. To Miranda's surprise, Shepard grabbed her wrist in passing and pulled her down the narrow corridor.

"Where are we going?" Miranda asked.

"You haven't given me the tour," Shepard said. "Where's my stateroom?"

"Right here," Miranda said, as they came to the hatch at the end of the corridor. "I, ah, thought you had to think about this."

"I did," Shepard said. She pushed Miranda back against the hatch, causing it to hiss open.


	9. Chapter 9

Warning: Mature content starts here.

* * *

Shepard tried not to stare as she followed Miranda into the opulent stateroom. The overhead was a single vast viewport, broken only by two of the ship's titanium-alloy ribs. The starlight, somewhere between darkness and moonlight, gave the room a ghostly look, and Shepard's hair the color of dying embers. She said, "I've bunked in smaller rooms than this with my platoon." Then she wished she'd put it differently.

Miranda, of course, didn't miss that. "Before Akuze?" Shepard saw her shoulders draw inward, just a little. She would think Shepard had brought her here just to -

Shepard was still holding Miranda's wrist. She pulled, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to turn Miranda around, the wary look on her face giving way briefly to surprise. "What - "

Shepard stepped into her, her arms snaking around Miranda's waist and pulling her close. Miranda was soft and warm and her hair smelled, as always, like pine needles, dampened now by the rain. She was still wearing her pajamas, which were thin to begin with, and wet, so it felt almost like holding her naked.

Miranda squirmed; she'd never liked being startled, even like this. "Shepard - "

"Shut up and hold me." Shepard's voice was muffled by Miranda's shoulder, but something in it made Miranda obey. Her arms went around Shepard's shoulders, one hand on Shepard's back, the other on the back of her neck. Damp spikes of red hair tickled her wrist.

"Kate, your muscles feel like prefab."

"Yeah, I get scared like everyone else. It just takes longer to catch up. That's why I'm Shepard." Her voice was shaky.

"You're also soaking wet and shivering." Not all of it was from cold, Miranda knew now, but she knew what would help anyway. "Come here."

Miranda led Shepard to the bathroom, all brass and marble and diffuse golden light. The walk-in shower was large enough for four people, with dozens of nozzles on three walls. With a quiet hiss, the two of them were quickly enveloped in a soft warm mist. Shepard felt an instant of childish amusement at showering with her clothes on, but her uniform was already soaked anyway. They were both barefoot; they hadn't even had time to throw on shoes earlier.

"Shower: warmer," Miranda said.

Shepard's lips pulled back from her even, white teeth in a smile of pleasure as the heat soaked into her. She seemed calmer now. She put her hands around Miranda's waist again.

"You're safe here," Miranda said. Her hands came up to Shepard's shoulders, the back of her neck.

"I know," Shepard said. For Miranda, it felt good to hear her say that. Shepard went on, "It's just...when you're young, you think you're immortal. I knew better than that. But now...living matters, in a way it didn't before."

"Dying will do that."

Shepard looked at her. A smile tugged at her mouth. "Actually, I was thinking of you."

"What changed your mind?" Miranda said. The touch, and the words, as good as they felt, weren't enough to make her let her guard down again. She needed to know the why.

"You're still the same Miranda," Shepard said. "I don't believe the same things you do, but...they aren't all you are. I've seen who you are."

"You're not going to change me, if that's what you're thinking."

"I don't want to. If you change for your own reasons, fine, but I'm not asking it."

"I should have told you sooner." Miranda didn't have to say about what.

"You were always going to." Shepard reached up and ran her fingers through Miranda's wet dark hair, and smiled. "Even with all your upgrades, you're human, just like the rest of us. Besides, it's not your perfection I like. It's your imperfections."

Miranda's mouth twitched. "Plural?"

"You'd better have some more hidden somewhere." Shepard's eyes stayed on Miranda's as her fingers began opening the buttons of Miranda's dark blue pajamas. Miranda had forgotten she was still wearing them. It had been maybe an hour since she woke up, but it seemed like a long time ago now. Miranda's hands came up underneath Shepard's and began unbuttoning Shepard's borrowed uniform as well. Then she found Shepard's hands around hers, holding them.

Shepard's blue eyes were worried. "Miranda...since I woke up, I haven't...I haven't even tried - "

Miranda squeezed Shepard's hands, hard. "It's all right. You will. I promise."

Shepard lowered her eyes and nodded once.

"I wanted to include that with the other tests," Miranda said, "but Jacob said - "

Shepard gave Miranda a playful shove. "Yeah? How?"

Miranda's arms went around Shepard's waist and pulled her close. Shepard closed her eyes and her lips opened as Miranda kissed her. Miranda closed her eyes, too, and then there were nothing but the taste of Shepard's mouth, the tickle of her breathing on Miranda's cheek, and the warm softness of her body in Miranda's arms. Miranda forgot about Cerberus, about Oriana, about everything. She was finally here, in the present.

Her hands took the lapels of Shepard's uniform jacket and pulled. Buttons flew and skittered across the shower floor. Shepard shrugged the jacket off her shoulders, but it clung wetly to her arms, pinning her hands at her sides. She squirmed and her right hand reached behind her back to pull off her left sleeve, but Miranda caught her. "No," Miranda said, as if giving Shepard a direction during her physical therapy. "Leave it."

Shepard's mouth opened slightly, then curved into a surprised smile. She said nothing and let Miranda do the work of undressing her. Miranda reached behind Shepard's back and unhooked her bra. Their former home hadn't stocked any fancy underwear; the bra was black, comfortable, and functional, and an instant later the straps slid down Shepard's arms to join the bunched uniform jacket.

Miranda's hands came up and cupped Shepard's breasts, which fit them nicely. Shepard was comfortable with her body - an adult lifetime in the service had taken care of that, though she would have liked her breasts to be a little larger - especially right now, opposite Miranda's, whose generous size was hardly concealed by the wet pajama top. Shepard had thought about surgery, but those same years of military discipline made it seem like a needless indulgence. Miranda had seen her before, she told herself, but of course this was different.

But Miranda gave her a better reassurance than words. She bent her head, slipped Shepard's right nipple between her soft full pink lips, and sucked.

"Oh God," Shepard said, unconsciously lifting her heels and arching her back to press herself more firmly into Miranda's mouth. The sensation was right on the razor edge between pleasure and discomfort. She moaned, without words now, as Miranda sucked harder. The feeling of having her wrists bound, of not being able to resist if Miranda was too rough on her, sent a rush of heat up into her face and neck...and downward as well. Then, as if she'd said that aloud, Miranda's teeth pinched her, and her whole body spasmed.

Miranda's mouth released Shepard with a tiny "pop", then she enfolded her in a hug, squeezing Shepard's breasts - and her nipples, which were small and pink and very hard now - against the slightly rough blue wool of her pajamas. Shepard sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes glazed over and a shudder rippled through her. Miranda held her tight and rubbed her body against Shepard's, drawing a whimpering "ohhhh..." from her. Even in the warmth of the shower, she could feel the heat of Shepard's breathing on the side of her neck.

Shepard was panting, her pouting mouth opened slightly. Miranda bit Shepard's lower lip and tugged. Her hands slid down over Shepard's flat stomach, feeling the firm ridges of her abdominal muscles, until they found the buttons on her slacks. Shepard shifted her hips as Miranda hooked her thumbs under both the opened slacks and underwear and pushed downward. They slid down Shepard's long, slender legs with less trouble than the jacket. Shepard quickly kicked them away, then slid her bare feet apart on the wet tile of the shower floor. It was obvious what she wanted.

Miranda traced the tips of her fingers slowly up the insides of Shepard's thighs to their joining. Shepard moaned into Miranda's mouth, squirming against the jacket that pinned her wrists, and trying to grind herself against Miranda's hand. Miranda held back, teasing, barely dipping into the warmth and wetness that weren't from the shower. But almost before she realized it she had one, then two fingers all the way inside. Shepard was very tight - Miranda worried for a moment about hurting her, but it wasn't entirely up to Miranda. Shepard's body almost seemed to pull her fingers in and clasp them greedily, refusing to let go.

Miranda smirked. She knew by heart where to find Shepard's most sensitive places - the tiny forests of nerve endings. Her fingers curled slightly -

"Ooh God." Almost at once, Shepard's blue eyes squeezed shut and a crease of utter concentration appeared between her eyebrows, her lips parted, her breathing coming in shorter and more ragged gasps, a thin trickle of wetness escaping from the corner of her mouth.

Miranda rested her head on Shepard's shoulder and began kissing the side of Shepard's long, slim neck, teasing and flicking and nipping at Shepard's ear with her tongue, occasionally taking a wisp of Shepard's red hair in her teeth and pulling. Her fingers were now sliding gently but insistently in and out, in and out, Shepard's hips matching the rhythm exactly and her whole body seeming to hum with her stream of tiny "oh"s and "mm!"s.

Shepard found herself more sensitive than she remembered, much more, but she was past being able to ask how such a thing had happened, past thinking coherently at all. That didn't mean she kept her thoughts to herself.

" - oh, oh God please right there, right - Miranda I'm going to - I'm - I - "

She did.

Miranda held her tight, riding out the long shuddering waves of her release. Shepard was suddenly quiet, as if too overwhelmed even to cry out. It was a few minutes before Miranda could remove her fingers. She half expected to find them broken. She smiled, letting Shepard's head rest on her shoulder, closing her eyes and just feeling Shepard in her arms. Slowly, the trembling faded.

Shepard giggled, drunkenly happy and relieved. "You were right. I guess I did."

"Sh. Don't try to talk." Miranda stroked her hair.

Shepard closed her eyes and smiled.

* * *

When Shepard woke, there was sunlight streaming through the window and lighting the lower half of the bed. For a moment, she thought she was still dreaming. Then she thought she was still back in the castle, and everything since was a dream. Then she felt something that told her it wasn't. She winced and hugged her knees. She was nude, but covered by a soft white sheet. She saw now that the overhead viewport doubled as a holographic projector. At the moment it showed a canopy of trees, the wind rustling the leaves with a soft rhythmic sound like the ocean, and sunlight dancing in the room as on the surface of moving water.

Her movement woke Miranda, who lay facing the other way. She turned over and propped herself up on an elbow. She wasn't wearing anything either. Her long black hair was no longer plastered down by rain, but combed out and lustrous, flowing free over her shoulders and the pillow beneath her. She took in Shepard's posture with one glance. Her mouth quirked. "Sore?"

Shepard nodded.

"Here." Miranda sat up, turned to the nightstand, and turned back holding a small tube.

"What is that?" Shepard said, watching Miranda unscrew the cap and squeeze a healthy dollop of clear gel into the crook of her fingers.

"A muscle relaxant and antispastic. I thought you might need it."

Shepard pushed the sheet down, lay back, and opened her thighs, thinking about how long it had been since she could make such a simple, total expression of trust. Still, she said, "I can - "

"Sh." Miranda gently rubbed some of the gel around the edges of Shepard's lips - it also contained lubricant, to make application easier - then carefully slipped one, then two fingers inside.

"Oh." Shepard smiled and closed her eyes and let out a long sigh that ruffled her red bangs. The soreness began to recede into a comfortable numbness almost at once. Of themselves, her thighs drifted closed again, this time to keep Miranda's hand from going anywhere.

"Don't enjoy it too much," Miranda said. "No more exercise until you heal up."

Shepard's hand reached up into Miranda's lush dark hair. So much of it, and such a simple, sensuous pleasure just to sift it through her fingers. Shepard's own hair had just reached her shoulders, for the first time in years. She said, "You haven't had your exercise, Miss Lawson." She felt bad about having fallen asleep.

Miranda finished rubbing the gel into Shepard and kissed her. "You needed it more."

Shepard took Miranda's hand and pulled. Miranda let herself be pulled, and rolled on top of Shepard, her hair hiding her face in shadow and tickling Shepard's shoulders.

"You're always good to me," Shepard said. "Now I need something else." To be good to you, she didn't need to say. She pulled Miranda down into another kiss. Miranda's dark hair spilled around Shepard's face, drowning her in its scent and shutting out the sunlight. Miranda's weight pressed down on Shepard, soft and warm, and Shepard's hands tried to take all of her in at once, every curve and valley. Miranda moaned into Shepard's mouth and the sound of it hummed through both their bodies, joined together.

Shepard put her hands on Miranda's shoulders and broke the kiss, a thin wet strand still bridging their mouths. She slowly pushed Miranda upright, kissing her way down her chest and stomach, until Miranda was kneeling over her. Then she slid her hands down Miranda's sides, to her hips, and tugged, looking up, her smile a clear invitation.

Miranda slid her knees forward on the soft white sheets until they dug into the pillow under Shepard's head. Shepard slipped her arms between Miranda's legs, then around, so her shoulders pressed against the backs of Miranda's thighs, the palms of her hands on Miranda's stomach. They quickly slid downward. Miranda was trimmed, not shaven, which struck Shepard as an unexpected concession to luxury. Shepard kept herself shaved for the same reason she kept her hair short - it was just more efficient. She pressed her face against Miranda's down, as soft as it was elsewhere, which didn't surprise her.

Miranda gasped and gripped the headboard tightly in both hands as Shepard quietly went to work, tracing her tongue gently up and down the edges of her lips. Unaware, she slid her knees a little farther apart, and then moaned sharply as the motion pressed Shepard's tongue flat against her clit.

Shepard, of course, had spent more than a few hours of her enforced idleness daydreaming about this. She wondered if Miranda would pretend to be as cold and correct as - well, as Miranda always pretended to be. But Shepard knew better. The real Miranda, if she let her show, would be fiery, passionate, vocal. As she was now.

Shepard's fingers lightly pinned Miranda's lips open, exploring inside them with her tongue, tasting her wetness, feeling the motions of Miranda's hips above her, responding to the slightest flick of her tongue here, the tip of her finger there. She pressed her tongue in, as far as she could, slowly making her way up to Miranda's clit, curling her tongue into a U around it and squeezing. She was rewarded by the sound of Miranda crying out and the sudden sharp pain of Miranda's hand reaching down to seize a fistful of her red hair, the demand unmistakable - more.

Shepard pursed her mouth, sucking, teasing with the tip of her tongue, sending hot white sparks shooting up through Miranda's body, glistening now with a faint sheen of sweat. Miranda leaned forward, her face partly covered by a curtain of dark hair, her long slim fingers white as she gripped the headboard with one hand, the back of Shepard's head with the other. Her moans came shorter and closer together, the motions of her hips more and more urgent, until something inside her let go completely and her full lips opened in a long, shuddering cry of release. Her nails dug pale grooves into the darkly finished wooden headboard, breaking two of them.

She slumped forward, resting her face on her arm, panting, trembling all over. Shepard wanted to feel it, share it. She slid out from under Miranda and turned and hugged her from behind, resting her flushed, damp face on Miranda's shoulder, clasping her hands together over Miranda's heart.

* * *

Shepard asked, "Does everyone call you Miranda? Don't you have any nicknames?"

They were lying next to one another, holding hands, with their fingers interlaced, no sensations but their touching and the sweat cooling on their skin. The simulated sunlight overhead had been replaced with the real starlight outside. Each of them was just a dark shape against the slightly brighter white sheet underneath.

Miranda smile couldn't be seen, only heard in her voice. "I had a childhood friend who called me Miri."

Shepard squeezed her hand. "Someone you had to let go of?"

"In fact, the only one I didn't, not completely, anyway. But we don't have many chances to talk."

Shepard closed her eyes again. "Miri. I like the sound of that."

"If you're asking if you can call me that, the answer is yes."

"Good."


	10. Chapter 10

Miranda woke before Shepard. She lay there for a minute, watching the blanket over Shepard rise and fall with her slow, even breathing, the peaceful look on her face.

She got out of bed. Shepard was a deep sleeper, which surprised her, but she liked it. She went into the bathroom, showered, and put on a lightweight black jumpsuit. Shepard's training would resume today - thanks to her boss' interference, they'd already lost a day, which was more than they could afford. She set the overhead to simulate a sunrise that would be finished about the time she had breakfast ready.

She walked into the small but well-furnished kitchen. She wasn't Gardner, but she'd learned to cook when she escaped from her father and had to learn to economize. She opened the freezer, the stasis field switching off automatically as she reached inside. Her hands chopped vegetables, ground coffee beans, and worked over the oven range. Her mind rehearsed the exercises they would do that day, planned what she and Shepard would do when they got to Ilium, and drafted the opening paragraph of another paper she wanted to write.

Shepard was awakened by the smell of cooking food, or more likely brewing coffee. She sat up and turned to put her feet on the floor, the blanket and sheet falling away from her nudity as she did so. She stood up and stretched. She caught Miranda watching and smiled.

Miranda pointed to Shepard's place at the table - meaning, don't bother dressing. Shepard lifted both reddish eyebrows, but she obeyed, pulling out a softly cushioned chair and sitting down. It did feel rather nice. "After two years, I'd think it'd more fun to see me with clothes."

Miranda said, "My ship, my rules." She set glasses and plates in front of Shepard, then at her own place, and sat down.

Shepard held the cup of coffee in both hands and gratefully inhaled. In front of her were hash browns, egg whites scrambled with chopped green peppers and tomatoes and artichokes, wheat toast, a sliced peach, and orange juice. She shook her head. "And you can cook? Now I'm intimidated."

"Shepard...I don't want to be told I'm pretty, or smart, or talented. I've had too much of that, and none of it meant a thing."

"It's your hands, actually."

"What?"

Shepard began mixing her hash browns into her eggs. "I used to love just watching you type your reports. Could have done that for hours."

A smile tugged at Miranda's mouth. "Well, that's a new one, at least."

Shepard said, "Anyway, it's just my way of saying I appreciate this. So - I appreciate this, Miri." Better still, she slowly but steadily ate everything Miranda fixed her.

As she finished, she said, "What do you think we'll find?" She knew it was a dangerous topic, but Miranda needed to let some of it out.

"I don't know, Shepard." Miranda wasn't the patient sort, and the worry was beginning to eat at her. She forced herself to think it through calmly. "Jacob sabotaged the quantum communicator on his way out, and I took out the comm arrays on the shuttles. So the boss likely doesn't know what happened yet. And I won't give him a clue until we're off Ilium - with Oriana."

"Sounds like he jumped the gun once already," Shepard said. "He won't be in a hurry to do it again."

"No." Miranda's fingers drummed the table. "He'll have the family moved. Probably just to somewhere else on Ilium."

"A bargaining chip," Shepard said. "Me for her."

"More likely just your cooperation. It doesn't matter," Miranda said, her face hard. "Even if he already has her, I'm not letting you charge off to be killed. One doesn't negotiate with terrorists." Her mouth thinned. "I ought to know."

"You're going to need help to get her out," Shepard said.

"Yes, but not yours - though I appreciate it."

Shepard sat forward. Her voice was flat. "You're not going to risk your life while I sit at home and worry."

"Think, Shepard. Pushing you into action prematurely is what the boss wanted, and why I helped you escape."

"We're six weeks out. It's your job to have me ready by then."

"Understood, Commander," Miranda said in a mutinous tone.

Shepard couldn't help smiling. She reached across the table and squeezed Miranda's hand.

Miranda squeezed back, and stood. "That's not realistic, but we'd better get started anyway."

* * *

The yacht had a luxurious dining room, which Miranda converted to a shooting range by removing the linens and crockery. The tables were bolted to the deck, but they could be used to simulate cover. She stood a spare mattress against the far bulkhead to prevent ricochets from missed shots, though the bulkhead was paneled in dark wood. She also dialed down the acceleration on Shepard's pistol.

From the armory she brought a target drone and a set of Armax capacitor armor for Shepard. She got the fit just right, of course. "Hard to believe this is the first time I've done this in two years," Shepard said as she wiggled her fingers into a glove. Everything seemed lighter and more comfortable than she remembered. She felt good. In her element again.

They drilled for six hours without stopping except for Shepard to take drinks of water. Miranda had Shepard fire at the target while standing, gripping the pistol in both hands, then her right, then her left. The drone hovered on antigravs and generated a spherical mass effect field to trap each bullet, then let it fall harmlessly to the deck. As Shepard hit the drone again and again, Miranda made the field smaller, until it was hardly larger than the drone itself - smaller than a human head, and Shepard hit it in or near the center every time. She had Shepard fire while kneeling, then lying prone, then popping up from cover. Clip after smoking clip ejected from Shepard's pistol and rolled around the deck, until Miranda had to sweep them away.

They ate a quick lunch with Jacob in the crew's mess, then went back to work. Miranda had the target move, first in a straight line, then dodging the way an enemy's head would. Then she had Shepard move and fire - walking, then jogging, dodging, diving, and rolling. She shouted and threw empty boxes at Shepard to distract her. She opened the vents and the hatch and used her biotics to fill the room with howling wind, overwhelming even the pistol's auto-compensation systems. The mattress was soon riddled with bullets, but Shepard was improving.

And she could feel it. She felt strong, and optimistic, though she knew much of it was because of Miranda. Yet she found it easier to focus than before, now that she had a clear goal. There was no horseplay or even idle talk; in six weeks, at least three lives might depend on how well she learned here.

After twelve hours of practice, Miranda stopped. "You fired over twenty-five hundred rounds and went through five boxes of thermal clips and two ammo blocks. We'll do more tomorrow, but you're still building your strength, too."

Shepard nodded, blowing drops of sweat out of her eyelashes. Her arms trembled with fatigue, making it hard to aim. She sat down and let Miranda strip off her armor, which would go into the cleaner for tomorrow. The light jumpsuit Shepard wore underneath was soaked. Miranda peeled that off as well, then took Shepard's hands and pulled her upright. They walked back to their stateroom.

Miranda kissed Shepard's cheek. "Take a shower and I'll make dinner."

Shepard smiled tiredly. "Deal."

* * *

Miranda went to the kitchen and sauteed two chicken breasts in a large skillet with olive oil, adding chopped onion, garlic, and parsley, followed by tomato sauce, basil, and rosemary.

"Right front: boil," she said. A few moments later, steam rose from the skillet. "Simmer until chicken is tender," she said, covering the skillet. Sensors in the oven range watched the skillet's contents and the range beeped a minute later. She uncovered the skillet, stirred brown rice into the mixture, and covered it again. "Simmer and stir until rice is tender," she said. The range beeped again, then put the inside of the skillet in a stasis field until Miranda removed it to eat or gave more instructions.

She made two bowls of spinach salad with chopped nuts, then put two sweet potatoes in the oven. "Oven: cook until tender." The potatoes promptly exploded, startling her and coating the inside of the oven window with sizzling orange mush. She'd forgotten to poke holes in them. "Oven: clean." The oven rinsed itself as she got two more potatoes from the pantry, jabbing each with a fork. It was clean by the time she put them in and repeated the order. It beeped a minute later as they finished cooking.

Shepard walked out of the bathroom with a white robe wrapped loosely around her, her red hair wet and dark. "I thought explosives training was next week."

"Watch yourself or it'll be unarmed combat," Miranda said, pouring two glasses of ice water. There was no wine - neither of them drank.

"Yeah?" Shepard walked up to Miranda and put her arms around her. Her robe fell open and Miranda's hands slid under it and around her. She wasn't wearing anything under it. Miranda rested her head on Shepard's shoulder, breathing in the smells of her soap and shampoo, the warm clean fabric of her robe.

The world spun briefly around Shepard and then she was flat on her back. It hadn't hurt, or even knocked her breath out. Her robe lay open across the amber cherry wood kitchen floor. Miranda was lying on top of her, a curtain of her dark hair tickling Shepard's face.

"Yeah," Miranda said softly, her soft full lips parted slightly, showing the faintest gleam of her white teeth.

Shepard's tiredness had left her. She smiled and breathed in and reached up to pull Miranda down into a kiss. Miranda smirked and resisted. Shepard pulled harder, but only lifted herself a bit off the floor.

She lay back down and ran her hands through Miranda's hair. Miranda's eyelashes fluttered and her lips parted a little more and she sucked in a breath and her back arched a little. Shepard did it again, this time running her nails across Miranda's scalp. Miranda made a sound and her blue eyes rolled up a little and her body moved, shifting her weight on Shepard. Shepard did it again, and again. Miranda closed her eyes and let her. Slowly, she relaxed into Shepard's embrace. Shepard put her hand on the back of Miranda's neck and kissed her.

"That was cheating," Miranda managed to say between kisses. Shepard kissed her again and this time Miranda pressed Shepard's lips open with her own and forced her tongue down into Shepard's mouth. Shepard's body jerked under Miranda's weight and she moaned, the sound trapped in Miranda's kiss. Miranda's thigh was pressed between the joining of Shepard's thighs, and she could feel the fabric of her jumpsuit becoming damp.

She broke the kiss, leaving Shepard panting slightly, and sat back on her heels, taking in the shape of Shepard's body, the curves of her hips, the fairness of her skin. Her hands reached out and her fingertips traced the outlines of Shepard's scars - from memory, as they were no longer visible. Shepard shuddered as Miranda's nails raked lightly over her areolae, nearly as pale as her skin and no larger than dimes.

Then Shepard's stomach rumbled. They both smiled. Miranda leaned down and kissed Shepard over her heart, then stood stiffly and extended a hand to pull Shepard up. "Sit down and eat." She patted Shepard's backside. "I worked too hard on this for you not to take care of it."

* * *

"'It was a dark and stormy night,'" Miranda read. "'In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.'"

They didn't have books here, so Miranda read from a datapad. Shepard, propped up against a stack of pillows with the sheet pulled up to her chin, closed her eyes and listened. She had asked for something on tactics, or at least related to the mission, but Miranda said it would be counterproductive, that her brain needed relaxation too. The overhead showed only the faint starlight outside, so the stateroom was lit by warm yellow lamps to either side of the bed.

Soon Shepard was yawning. Miranda finished the first chapter, put the datapad aside, and said, "Lights: out." She turned to Shepard, who was now only a shadow against the white sheets of the bed, and kissed her. Shepard's arms went around Miranda and pulled her close. Miranda slid her hands around Shepard's back and discovered Shepard had slipped out of her robe before sliding under the sheet. She smirked and pressed her knee between Shepard's thighs, which were together. Even in the darkness, she saw Shepard's eyes widen and her lips part slightly as she lifted one knee to accept Miranda's thigh between hers.

They lay there, their faces close but not kissing, their quiet breathing tickling one another and ruffling their hair. Miranda's thigh rubbed slowly and gently back and forth against Shepard, whose legs quickly closed around hers. Shepard's eyes drifted closed and her breathing began to rasp between her slightly open lips as Miranda began rubbing more firmly.

"Miri..." Shepard's voice was strained and breathless. "Not that I'm - ohh - " a ripple of pleasure coursed through her body as Miranda shifted her angle. It took her a moment to remember where she left off. "...complaining, but you said - "

Miranda kissed her, then whispered into her ear with a little puff of air: "I don't think you're sore here yet." She pressed her thigh against Shepard a little harder, for emphasis.

"Ohh," Shepard sighed. The fabric of Miranda's pajamas, soft but textured, was absolutely perfect against her clit. Her hands slid up Miranda's back and her long slim fingers entangled themselves in Miranda's lush dark hair, taking two thick handfuls. "Yes, please..." Her hips were working now, perfectly matching the rhythm of Miranda's thigh. "Yes - oh God, just like that." Her blue eyes were partly open, but she clearly wasn't seeing anything. In the dim light, her body glowed with a faint sheen of sweat. "Just - oh - ohmygod - Miri - "

Miranda's hands slid around Shepard's sides and came to rest on her breasts. Her nipples were small, but - Miranda smirked again - easy enough to find. Each of them quickly found itself between the joints of two fingers. Miranda squeezed and then tugged gently, as she ground the full length of her thigh against Shepard in one smooth, firm motion.

Shepard cried out. Her back arched and her fists tightened in Miranda's hair hard enough to light up her scalp. She suddenly let go, her hands sliding down Miranda's back and enfolding her in a crushing hug, both her legs wrapped around Miranda's, digging her clit into Miranda's thigh with a quivering, iron grip as her whole body shuddered with her orgasm. As before, she was almost silent, only a whimper escaping her.

Finally she moaned, almost too softly to hear. Slowly, her grip relaxed. She took in and let out a long, shaking breath. A single tear escaped from the corner of one blue eye and trickled down her face to melt into the pillow. She closed her eyes and smiled. Miranda kissed her again and she giggled a little. Whatever worries she had about the future, the look on her face said all was right with the world, right now. Already her breathing was becoming deeper, and in a few minutes she was asleep, still smiling.

Miranda was used to sleeping alone. On the rare occasion she slept with someone, she needed her own space. She also liked to have a pillow between her knees, though at the moment, Shepard's leg was taking care of that... When she woke up, she was surprised to find she had fallen asleep in Shepard's embrace as easily as if she'd never known anything else.


End file.
